Vampire Elite (31 page)

Etain, Crian’s mother, was elated at her son’s return and delighted to find that he had blood-bonded with someone who so clearly adored him. Because of the risks to vampires of blood-bonding with Amiti, mothers were universally worried when their offspring took blood-bonds, and often felt that the risks outweighed the benefits. But for mixed-blood vampires—Nightwalkers—like Crian, blood-bonding with Amiti provided a critical benefit in the form of tolerance to sunlight. It had been Etain’s spells insuring her son’s survival in the daylight so far, but the spell was difficult to sustain, and so her son’s blood-bond with Desiree was an enormous relief for Etain.
 

Desiree and Crian settled down in Etain’s castle and spent many happy years there. Their joy blossomed even more as Desiree gave birth to three beautiful sons, each two years apart: Dughall, Bryce, and Greig. The lives of Desiree, Crian, and Etain were filled with treasure, graced by three frolicking, devoted, endlessly curious children. Crian taught them horseback riding and handling of swords, knives, and other weaponry; Etain taught them magic; and Desiree, the eternal values of kindness, loyalty, honesty, and compassion.
 

As the offspring of a vampire and an Amiti, all three brothers were innately immune to the sunlight. But as they grew into adulthood, they began to require blood. Desiree was, of course, able to sustain them on her blood, but the boys looked forward to the day when they found their own Amiti mates, just as their father had, who would feed them and share their lives with them. The boys adored their mother, and they had been raised believing that a union of a vampire and an Amiti was the accepted norm—and the ideal—of the species.
 

They would pay the highest price for their naïveté.
 

When Dughall was twenty-five and Bryce twenty-three, they were both seduced into blood-bonding with an Amiti female who then used the blood-bond as a lethal tool to kill both of the young vampires. Crian was out hunting with the two young men when suddenly Dug and Bryce had fallen off their horses, screaming in agony. Crian held them in his arms, crying and praying to all the gods to save his innocent sons. But they were being burned alive from within, and nothing could be done against the power of the blood-bond.

Crian would never forget the bleak look on Desiree’s face when he returned to the castle, tears streaming down his face, holding the ashes that were all that remained of her two beautiful sons.
 

Crian’s heart was ripped in two, and he swore on the ruined bodies of his sons that from that moment forward he would not rest until he had avenged their deaths. As far as he was concerned, the only good Amiti was a dead one, or one who was imprisoned as bloodstock. He’d devote his life to hunting down and killing the bitch who had murdered his sons, and capturing or killing other Amiti so they’d never blood-bond with vampires.

Once he’d made that vow, he found that he couldn’t bear to make eye contact with Desiree, could barely look at her at all. He was beginning to think that he had no choice but to leave his Amiti mate—at least until he avenged his sons’ deaths—and then what happened the next evening sealed the deal.
 

The family was gathered for a meal no one wanted to eat when a servant came into the room and handed Crian a sealed envelope. Inside was a card embossed with an image of three winged women in Greek tunics with serpents growing out of their heads.
 

Etain gestured for Crian to pass her the card. When he did so, she put her palm on the picture and went into a trance. Her voice when she spoke was octaves lower than usual. “This image depicts the Erinyes, the Greek goddesses of vengeance, who are said to pursue those guilty of crimes against their own blood. They are the patrons of the Avengers, Amiti assassins linked to the Order of the Eye of Ra.
 

“The Avengers believe that vampires and Amiti are the children of the same Goddess and share the same bloodline. The vampire practice of keeping Amiti bloodstock therefore constitutes a crime against their own blood. The Avengers have doomed vampires to death and use the most powerful Amiti tool, the blood-bond, to accomplish the decimation of the vampire race.

“The female who trapped our boys in the blood-bond and killed them is one of the Avengers. Her name is Serena.”

“My boys were guilty of nothing! They had never harmed an Amiti; they never had bloodstock—they did no more than love an Amiti girl. Why did it have to be my sons? This is so unfair! I’ll find this Serena and rip her merciless heart out with my bare hands!” Desiree buried her face in her hands, weeping.
 

“Tell me what you know about the Eye of Ra,” Crian demanded, disregarding Desiree’s pain.
 

“Nothing more than anyone else,” Desiree replied, still covering her face. “I’ve heard that they exist, but they’re a secret organization. I’ve never met one of them. As for Avengers ... I know they’ll kill anyone, including their own people if they blood-bond with vampires. The Avengers are merciless monsters. Everybody fears them.”
 

“So it’s up to us to find them and put an end to them. The death of my sons must be avenged. Get ready, Greig.”
 

Greig, Crian’s youngest son, was only twenty-one at that time. For hours Desiree and Etain begged Crian not to go on this dangerous venture, but both males ignored them. Father and son left early the next morning, leaving the devastated females behind.

Over the next seven years, Crian created a new life for himself. He became so notorious as a hunter of Amiti that the term
Hunter
was used to refer to him and then to the pride he founded. Under his leadership, the Hunter pride developed a monopoly on the capture and sale of Amiti bloodstock. He lost track of how many Amiti had been imprisoned on the Hunter estate, most going on to live miserable lives in the underground prisons of other Sekhmi prides—but he never found Serena.

Desiree tried repeatedly to contact him through the blood-bond, but he ignored her. Then one day he received a new kind of communication from her: a death threat, an image of him burning alive if he didn’t quit the dirty work of hunting Amiti.
 

How dare she!
Had she forgotten their two sons so quickly? Burning with rage, he went home to Etain’s castle, where he learned that Desiree had returned to France to live with her mother. So he went there.

It was a cold, damp evening when Crian arrived. He slipped into the house and found Desiree in the kitchen, her back to him as she fixed dinner. His heart twisted at seeing her—and then she turned to face him, and he came undone, just as he had on the night they met.
 

Crian swept her into his arms and smothered her face with kisses. She responded by melting in his embrace as though nothing had changed between them, and they spent an ecstatic night together. Crian couldn’t believe he had learned to live without her love, and couldn’t imagine doing it again.

So the next morning Crian arose before Desiree and packed all her belongings before waking her up. “Get ready, Desi. We’re leaving now.”
 

“Leaving? Where?” she asked groggily.

“To my pride. You’re my mate; you’ll live with me. Nobody will ever touch you. I am their Alpha.”
 

That woke her up. “You must be crazy! I’ll never live with Hunters.”
 

“You need to understand, Desi: I’ll never abandon my search for the murderer of my sons. Hunting is the best way to find Serena and the Avengers.”
 

“No Crian, it’s not right. You make my people suffer. I was bloodstock myself, I know what Amiti have to endure as bloodstock, and it’s horrible. You can’t imagine. Please stop. Come back to me. Please, Crian.”
 

The fought for a long time. Finally Crian gave up, hurling the bag of Desiree’s clothes against the wall. “Good bye, Desi. You’ll never see me again.”
 

He slammed the door behind him, hard, and heard all the old china that decorated the shelves in the room crash to the floor. With a mixture of satisfaction and sorrow, he imagined Desiree crawling across the floor, collecting the broken pieces, soaking them with her tears, a symbol of their broken relationship, their broken lives.
 

But a month later, Crian was back, unable to resist her or deny the power of their bond. Since then, Crian and Desiree had met regularly for feeding and furious, desperate lovemaking. She always shielded her location from him so that the two most important males in her life, her mate and her brother, never crossed paths. Instead, she set meeting places that were always many miles away from Oberon, and she also never showed him her human forms, only her true Amiti.

* * *

Crian came back to the present to find Desiree watching him thoughtfully, her fingers tangled in his hair. “I feel something happened.”

He caught her hand and placed it to his mouth, kissing her palm.
 

“My brother-in-law captured our princess, Simone. That would be bad enough, but the thing is, she’s also your Keeper of Life. We’re thinking that he’ll either kill her or try to bring her over to the Amiti side. It worries me. My mother consulted an Oracle.”
 

“What did the Oracle say?”
 

“The Key will be turned. The Keepers will destroy the vampires.”
 

Desiree’s eyes filled with terror. “All vampires? Or just Sekhmi?”
 

“When a tornado descends to earth, it devastates everything in its path. And even though Sekhmi try to reinforce the differences between themselves and Nightwalkers whenever they can—and even though Nightwalkers are forbidden from keeping bloodstock—I don’t think the Keepers will bother to put that fine a point on it. To them, a vampire is a vampire.”
 

Desiree rolled him onto his back and cupped his face with her hands. “Then it will never happen, even if I have to turn against my own brother, against my own people. You and Greig are also my people; you’re my family. I’ll protect you, whatever the cost.”

Chapter 43

Somewhere
Three hundred and fifteen days after Arianna’s capture

Arianna was keeping track of her time in captivity by marking on the wall with her fingernail every time the Sekhmi came in to draw blood, which happened about every seven days, once a week. The marks were her only way of feeling somewhat grounded; they gave her a sense of time. It wasn’t much, but it was better than just existing day after endless day.
 

The only reprieve she’d experienced had happened very early on, once the first wave of depression had settled into her as though it would never leave. One day she’d woken up to the gentle touch of someone’s hand gliding across her arm. Startled, she’d opened her eyes to find a young woman about her age bending over her, her streaming, golden hair like sunshine even in the harsh fluorescent light. Zlata was another bloodstock, and the two of them had bonded immediately and intensely, talking and cuddling. She’d felt at the time that Zlata’s presence had literally saved her life, and she’d thought she’d die when after a little more than a week she’d woken up alone again. Arianna had known that Sekhmi occasionally brought in temporary companions to cheer up severely depressed bloodstock, and she’d let herself forget it. Or, really, she’d probably allowed herself go into deep denial about it.

After grieving Zlata’s departure for a few days, though, Arianna had risen to her feet and given herself a pep talk. Zlata was still bloodstock, just like her, and just like thousands of Amiti. It was her job to stay alive, stay sane, so that she could fulfill her purpose as Amiti Queen. Her people were depending on her.

From that day on, she’d tried to be consistent about encouraging herself not to give up hope that she’d be free again; she tried to fight despair by repeating her affirmation,
there’s no such thing as a dead end ...
And when even that wasn’t enough, she reminded herself that she might be the only hope for all the Amiti imprisoned like she was.

But her resolve began wearing thin as days turned into weeks and weeks into months. She slipped into severe depression and spent most of her time in bed. The Sekhmi drained her within an inch of her life every week, and on top of that, Khay seemed to know whenever she had any energy left and would come into her cell, using his light lasso on her until she could barely stand. If his goal was to make her as miserable as possible, he was succeeding: she was in constant pain and had so many migraines that they seemed to all blend into one long headache.

On the day she scratched her forty-fifth mark on the wall—three hundred and fifteen days of imprisonment, give or take—Bahiti brought her a new companion, a young Amiti girl named Gabi. It wasn’t clear whether she was supposed to be a second bloodstock for Khay’s pride or whether they were more interested in the money she’d provide the pride if they sold her. Arianna didn’t ask, and they wouldn’t have answered her anyway.
 

Gabi’s appearance in Arianna’s life was like a ray of light shining in the darkness. Except for the Sekhmi, who either ignored her or tortured her, Arianna had been completely alone since they’d taken Zlata away. She had no idea how she’d managed to keep her sanity.
 

The girls bonded immediately, talking for hours and then falling asleep in each other’s arms. Arianna had known that she missed physical contact with another living being, but she hadn’t known how important it was until Gabi’s appearance. But the presence of her new companion set her on edge, too: she’d learned the hard way that Sekhmi always had an agenda. And she was right.
 

One day Khay, Bahiti, and Sef came to her cell.
 

“Hello, Redhead.” Khay wrapped Arianna’s hair around his hand and turned her to face him. “It’s time for you to become my blood-bond.”
 

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Arianna had had her fill of Khay’s superior attitude. She wasn’t afraid of him or of the pain he inflicted on her. There was nothing he could do to hurt her anymore. “If you blood-bond with me, I’ll kill you. I promised you I would, and nothing has changed.”