Refuge (25 page)

“If you’re not up to it, it’s okay.”

I knew what he was doing, and still I let
myself be goaded. “No, I can do it,” I said to him as I told the
demon what I needed. Within seconds, I felt more power flowing into
my body. I bent and gripped the handle of the heavier weight and
tried to lift it off the ground. It might as well have been welded
to the floor. I huffed and tried two more times, barely moving it
each time. “I can’t,” I finally admitted, straightening to look at
him.

“Lesson number one, demon strength is
expendable. You use it up and you will need to let it replenish,
just like your own energy.”

“But you never get tired.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “I do, but it
takes a lot more than lifting weights, and I have been doing this a
long time.” He went to the largest weight, which judging by its
size was at least one hundred and fifty pounds, and hefted it in
one hand. “Lesson number two, using your demon strength takes
practice. Don’t expect to lift cars any time soon.”

“Show off,” I muttered, and he chuckled.

“You’ll get there. It just takes time.” He
laid the weight on the floor again. “You’ve already come a long way
for your second lesson.”

“Really?”

His eyes were sincere. “Yes.”

I looked at the sixty-pound weight. “I want
to try it again.”

“You’ve done enough for now.”

“You don’t think I can do it.”

“I know you can’t.” He let out a small laugh.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he shook his head. “You might not
realize it yet, but this is more strenuous than it seems and you’ll
feel it later. You don’t want to overdo it.”

“So, are we done training for now?”

He sat and pointed at the seats next to him.
“We’ll take a short break, and then I want to try something
new.”

I joined him, not sure if I wanted to know
what he had in store for me. So far he had been careful not to push
me too hard, but we had definitely moved out of my comfort zone.
Still, I’d had more progress with my Mori after two days training
with Nikolas than weeks with Callum. Despite Nikolas’s mood
changes, I was more comfortable talking to him, and it felt like
I’d known him a lot longer than three months.

“Can I ask you something?” I said after
several minutes of quiet. “You know all about my life, but you
never talk about yours. What was it like where you grew up? Where
is your family now?”

He leaned back and rested his arms on the
backs of the seats on either side of him. “I grew up in a military
stronghold just outside Saint Petersburg. Miroslav Fortress is
nothing like Westhorne. It’s surrounded by high stone walls and run
more like a military base, although there were a number of families
like mine there. My parents were advisors to the Council and very
involved in planning military operations, so it was necessary for
us to live there instead of in one of the family compounds.”

“It doesn’t sound like a fun place to live.”
I couldn’t imagine spending my life confined by walls that blocked
everything but the sky. The picture in my mind matched the one I
had of the Mohiri when I first heard about them, of living in
barracks focused on nothing but hunting.

“It was actually a very good life, and we had
a lot more luxuries and conveniences than most people had at the
time. Back then, even the wealthy didn’t have running water, indoor
plumbing, or indoor gas lighting, just to name a few.” His eyes
took on a faraway look as he recalled the details of his childhood.
“My parents were busy and travelled a lot, but they were very
loving, and one of them always stayed home while the other
travelled. They pushed me hard in my training and schoolwork, but I
knew they were preparing me for the dangers I would face when I
became a warrior.”

“So, you’re an only child?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that explains a lot.” I smirked,
earning a playful scowl. “Did you have many friends? What did you
do for fun?”

“I had a few good friends over the years.
Most families moved when the parents were transferred to other
strongholds and others moved in. I don’t think I was ever lonely. I
liked to watch the warriors train, and I spent a lot of time
hanging around the training grounds. They all taught me how to
fight and use weapons. By the time I started formal training, I was
so advanced they had to place me with the senior trainees.”

Why did that not surprise me? “I bet your
parents were very proud of you.”

His eyes shone with affection. “They were;
they still are.”

“You said you were in Russia until you were
sixteen and then your family moved to England. Why did you move if
you all loved the compound in Russia?”

He looked surprised that I had remembered
that detail, which he had shared with me back in Maine. “My sire
was asked to assume leadership of a key military compound outside
London when its leader was killed in a raid. We lived there for
eight years before my parents were asked to help establish several
new strongholds in North America. By then, I was a full warrior and
I found the wildness of this continent appealing, so I tagged
along.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“They went back to Russia about fifty years
ago. My sire is the leader of Miroslav Fortress now. My mother was
offered leadership of another stronghold, but she did not want to
be separated from him. I see them at least once a year.”

“So, um, what do you do for fun besides
killing vampires and bossing people around?”

His eyebrows rose, and I gave him what I
thought was my most innocent look. “Come on, you have to do
something for fun. Do you read? Watch TV? Knit?”

“I read sometimes.” He named a few books by
Hemmingway, Vonnegut, and Scott, and it was no surprise they were
all about war. He did not care for television or movies, and
according to him the best decade for music was the sixties. I
laughed when he admitted that he and Chris had been at Woodstock
and I tried to imagine them in the bohemian clothes popular at the
time. He said he was there because the event attracted a lot of
vampires, and most of the attendees were too stoned or drunk or
high on love to pay attention to them. I found it impossible to
believe that Nikolas or Chris could go anywhere unnoticed, but I
kept that observation to myself.

“By the way, why didn’t you tell me Chris was
my cousin? What if I’d started crushing on him like every other
girl back home?” Ugh.

The look he shot me was indecipherable. “You
were spooked when you learned what you were, and I thought it was
too soon to introduce you to your Mohiri family. If it makes you
feel better, Chris didn’t know at first either.”

“Just promise, no more keeping things from
me.”

“Ask me anything and I’ll give you an honest
answer,” he said after a short pause, and it made me feel like
there were important questions I didn’t know to ask.

“You ready to try something different?” he
asked after we had been sitting for twenty minutes.

“Like what?”

He turned more toward me. “I’ve been thinking
about what you told me yesterday about your power getting stronger.
You were worried it might hurt your demon or another Mohiri, but I
don’t think it will, at least not intentionally. The bazerats and
lamprey demons were in their true form, which made them more
vulnerable to your power.” He reached over and took my hand in his.
“Our demons live inside us and are shielded by our bodies. I think
that
, and the
fact that you also have a Mori inside you, is why your power is not
flaring up right now.”

I held my breath as the truth of his words
sank in. He was right; my power was not reacting to him at all. The
only thing stirring in me were the tiny butterflies in my stomach
from him holding my hand. Tugging my hand from his, I tucked it
into my pocket. “Was that what you wanted to try?”

One corner of his mouth quirked. “Not quite.
We know your power doesn’t react instinctively toward me, but I
want to find out if you can use it against me consciously.”

“What?” I jumped to my feet and backed away
from him. “Are you crazy? I could kill you.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that!” An image surfaced of
what had been left of the lamprey demon, and I shook my head. “You
didn’t see what I did to that demon in Boise. If you had, you
wouldn’t even suggest this.”

He stood but didn’t move toward me. “I saw
the pictures our guys took before they cleaned it up.”

I took another step back. “Then why the hell
would you ask me to try to do that to you?”

“I’m not asking you to do that.” He held up
his hands. “Listen to me. I think your power reacts when you are
frightened or in danger, and you don’t believe it, but you
can
control
it. You were in mortal danger when the lamprey demon attacked you
and you knew you had to kill or be killed, so you did what you had
to do to survive. You may have been afraid when you were in here
with the bazerats, but you never really felt like you were in real
danger, did you? Not with everyone outside.”

I thought about how I’d felt when the bazerat
had leapt at me. I’d been scared yes, but afraid for my life? No.
All I’d wanted was to subdue them, and I didn’t even know they were
demons until after the task was complete.

“You’ve been using your power to heal
creatures most of your life and you know how to manipulate it and
how to release it in controlled bursts, right?” I nodded. “It’s the
same power; you just used it offensively with the demons. I think
you can learn to use your power as a weapon if you start thinking
of it as one and the same.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. I was pretty
sure he was right about the power all coming from the same source,
and I was excited about the possibility of learning to use it to
protect myself. After all, what would be better than a weapon you
could carry inside you?

But what if I tried to use it on Nikolas and
I couldn’t control it? What if I hurt him or worse? The thought of
him dying left me cold; the thought of me being the one to end his
life sucked the air from my lungs, and I had to remind myself to
breathe. “I can’t . . . I can’t do it . . . ” I wheezed, close to
hyperventilating.

Nikolas moved so fast he was gripping my
shoulders before I could react. His eyes softened to a smoky gray
as they captured mine. “This really frightens you, doesn’t it?”

I could only nod.

“All the more reason for you to learn to
master it. If you don’t, it will control you instead, and we both
know how much you hate being controlled.” His lips curved into a
small smile. “You trust me, right?”

I looked past his shoulder, wondering how he
could ask that after everything we had been through. “Yes.”

“And I trust you with my life.”

My eyes snapped back to his and met his
unwavering gaze.

“I trust you, Sara, and I know you won’t hurt
me.”

“Yes, but – ”

“You were afraid to connect with your Mori at
first, but you did it and now you no longer fear it. This is no
different.” His hands left my shoulders and ran down my arms to
take my hands and lay my palms against his chest. I could feel his
slow steady heartbeat under my fingers, telling me with more than
words how confident he was in me. “Start slow and see what happens.
You can pull away anytime you need to.”

“Okay,” I agreed shakily. “But not here.” I
was not going to take a chance of something going wrong so close to
his heart. Lifting my hands from his chest, I took one of his hands
in both of mine, acutely aware of the rough texture of his palm
against mine. I opened my power and let it slowly fill my hands but
didn’t try to push into him. He stood, unmoving, showing no signs
he felt anything out of the ordinary.

“Do you feel anything?” I asked him, and he
shook his head. I turned it up a notch and asked him again. Still
nothing. More power pooled in my hands and they began to emit a
soft glow. It was enough power to mend a dog’s broken leg yet
Nikolas didn’t even twitch a muscle.

“Your hands feel warmer. What are you doing?”
he asked, and I explained how I was directing power to them as I
would for a healing.

I released his hand. “I don’t think this is
going to work. I only know how to heal things, and I don’t know
what I did to those demons.”

“Hmmm.” He stared over my head for a moment
before he gave me a smile that made me wary. “Your offensive power
only surfaces when there is a demon nearby, but it doesn’t sense my
Mori.”

“That’s a good thing though, right?” At least
I could rest knowing I wouldn’t hurt another Mohiri.

“It is as long as we keep our demons
restrained, but what happens if we allow them closer to the
surface.” Something in his voice made me nervous and I tried to
pull away, but he grabbed my hands again

“Nikolas, whatever you are thinking is a
really bad idea.” I gasped as his eyes began to shimmer like pools
of liquid silver. I stared into them like a moth mesmerized by
flame, and it wasn’t until my Mori came roaring awake and straining
against its walls that I was able to break free of their spell. It
was all I could do to restrain my own demon that fought to get
closer to Nikolas’s.

It wasn’t until I had wrangled my Mori back
under control that I realized it wasn’t the only thing that had
awakened.
No, no,
no,
I wailed silently as the first sparks of static crackled
through my hair. I reached for the runaway magic and pulled it back
inside me with more ease than I had expected. It felt wild and
exhilarating compared to the tame healing power I knew so well, and
for several seconds I was tempted to let it go free, to see what it
could do.

Strength I didn’t know I possessed filled me,
and I tore my hands from Nikolas’s and backed away from him.
Surprise flickered on his face before he began to stalk me
silently, his intent clear in his eyes. What the hell was wrong
with him? Didn’t he realize how much I could hurt him right
now?