Vampire Elite (38 page)

“If she chooses to cooperate with the Order, she will become bloodstock and spend the rest of her life with the others, underground, in a cell where we can keep an eye on her.”
 

“What about the Gift of Ra, Tor?” Leon asked. Tor heard some murmurs of acknowledgment, as though others had been wondering, too, and were glad Leon had asked.

“As long as we have her downstairs, where nobody else can access her power, I’ll still be able to hold my own. Don’t you concur?”

They all nodded. Good; they knew that sometimes it was best to just agree with him. He hoped he’d prove worthy of that confidence.

Chapter 51

Nobody in the pride knew the real reason why Ismen loved sea salt baths so much. They probably assumed that she thought sea salt was what made her skin so soft and radiant. Whatever they thought was fine with her, as long as they never found out the real secret of the sea salt.
 

She took the container of sea salt out of her closet, adding some water and swirling the container to dissolve the salt, and then dipped a hand towel in the solution and wiped down the huge mirror in her bedroom. When that was done, she stepped back, picking up her Persian cat, Lovely, who’d been rubbing against Ismen’s ankles, and extended her senses, listening intently. She hadn’t sensed anyone in her wing of the pride’s residence, and decided that she was safe to do what she had planned without interruption.
 

Ismen took several long, even breaths and looked deeply into the mirror, preparing to use her Mirror Skill. It was another gift from Hathor, bestowed on all Amiti elders when they reached five hundred years of age, enabling them to communicate and teleport. Teleporting required two mirrors or other highly polished surfaces large enough to fit the user’s body; one mirror served as an entrance and the other as an exit. If another Amiti was positioned at the “exit” mirror, the two Amiti could tune in to each other’s energy and the traveler could use the other Amiti as an anchor to aim toward. If not, the traveler could project an image of the desired destination from their inner vision onto the mirror in front of them. Mirror communication followed the same principles, but was somewhat simpler and could be accomplished with even the smallest of mirrors.
 

Of course, the vampires were aware of the Mirror Skill and routinely took precautions to prevent unexpected guests. They commissioned sorcerers to create power seals, symbols that could be drawn indelibly onto mirrors and created barriers impenetrable by Amiti. The Amiti found a loophole, though: the seal could be removed from a mirror by washing it with a sea salt solution.
 

Ismen felt herself enter a light trance and aligned her own energies with those of her dearest friend, calling for her. Within a few moments, the mirror fogged up, and when it cleared, Ismen saw Desiree standing in a cozy wood-paneled bedroom, its tiny window covered by embroidered curtains.
 

Desiree lived in Siberia now. Ismen never could understand Desiree’s tendency to choose poverty and extreme climates when one word could propel her into the most luxurious villa imaginable and the status of an empress. But whatever; it was Desiree’s choice. So there Desiree stood, wearing not a satin negligee just as exquisite as Ismen’s, but flannel pajamas covered with daisies. It was cute and sad at the same time.
 

“What’s up? Why are you calling me at this ungodly hour?” Desiree asked, yawning.
 

“Sorry to wake you up, Desi, but I have something important to talk to you about. Mind if I come over?”

“Sure. Be my guest.” Desire waved her hand in invitation. “As usual, your timing isn’t great, but I still love you, you know. Let me just go splash some water on my face or something.” Without waiting for Ismen to reply, Desiree turned and stumbled away from the mirror.

Ismen stepped through the mirror, still holding Lovely in her arms. If she hadn’t felt the temperature drop, it would have felt exactly as if she’d stepped from one room to the next. She settled into a warm but remarkably comfortable chair to wait for her friend.
 

Ismen had known her cousin Desiree for centuries. They’d met in the twelfth century when Ismen, Leon, and Rune had gone to visit Ismen’s only living relative, her aunt Beatrice, Desiree’s mother. Desiree was in mourning: two of her three sons had been killed, and her mate and third son had abandoned her. Ismen supported Desiree in her grief, and they quickly developed a warm and loving relationship.

Using the Mirror Skill, they’d stayed in touch ever since, maintaining a close but utterly secret friendship for centuries. Desiree and Ismen had much in common: both loved and were blood-bonded to vampires, and since both refused to use the blood-bond to kill their mates, both were considered by Amiti society and the Order to be criminals who deserved to die.

There was one vast difference between their situations, of course. Ismen had chosen to live openly with her mates, among the Sekhmi, at the cost of her relationship to her people. Desiree, on the other hand, was able to live openly as an Amiti—to the extent it was possible for Amiti to do so—and enjoy her brother’s companionship, at the cost of having to hide her relationship and living in constant fear of being discovered.
 

Ismen couldn’t imagine what she would have done without Desiree; she was the only person who knew everything about Ismen, and she always listened without judging. And Ismen tried to return that same gift to Desiree.
 

Desiree also was a useful source of information, and Ismen sometimes asked for her help. Desiree loved her brother Oberon, and considered herself loyal to the Amiti people in general, but she’d hated the Order ever since one of its members had killed her sons. Ismen didn’t want to take advantage of her friend, and it was hard to find a middle ground where she felt that she was balancing the needs of her mates and her friend. She made a point of never asking for information that would put Oberon in danger, and over time, she’d found that if she kept her requests and questions to a minimum, Desiree would volunteer additional information as she saw fit.
 

“Okay, I’m back.” Wrapped in a robe and carrying a tray holding a teapot, cream and sugar, cups, and sweets, Desiree returned to the room. “Seriously, are you ever going to learn to think about time zones? Never mind; just go ahead. What do you need?” She poured tea for herself and Ismen, adding a little sugar and a lot of cream to Ismen’s, just the way she liked it.
 

“Our young Queen is with Tor now, and he intends to blood-bond with her.” Ismen tangled her fingers through Lovely’s thick fur, taking her teacup with her free hand.

“I take it this is bad news.”
 

“Very bad. Arianna was imprisoned, kept as bloodstock for nearly a year. She’ll never forget that, no matter how kind and generous the pride is. The King adores her and she seems to love him, but I guarantee you, when the time comes, she’ll destroy him and every other vampire in a heartbeat. I can feel it. She’ll do whatever she thinks is necessary to protect the Amiti.”
 

“Then we need to do whatever it takes to prevent them from blood-bonding. It can’t ever happen. You can’t even imagine—”

“You don’t know the whole story.” Ismen interrupted her. “My mother-in-law consulted the Oracle.”
 

“And?”
 

“The Key will be turned.” Ismen dug her fingers deeper into the long, silky fur of her pet. Lovely squirmed and hopped to the floor. “We need to act, Desi. We can’t just sit back and wait until they destroy our loved ones.” She’d had enough loss. Like Desiree, she’d lost two children in the war, and she wouldn’t let her mates die, too.

“So what do you suggest?”
 

“We need to get the Queen out of the picture. I have a plan to keep her from blood-bonding with Tor, and with the Oracle saying that the Key will be turned, it seems even more urgent. We kill two birds with one stone: we stop the blood-bond, and if she’s out of commission, they won’t have the five Keepers they need to turn the Key. And as a bonus, she won’t be able to name new Keepers.”
 

“Are you saying we should kill her?”
 

“No. We keep her alive. I don’t know how it works, since the title is supposed to pass from mother to daughter and she doesn’t have a daughter, but if we kill her, what if the title passes to someone else? Better to keep Arianna alive but under control. And that seems to be the consensus around here, too.”
 

“So what’s your plan?”
 

“Tomorrow the pride goes to Paris, then across Europe. The pride wants to see if Arianna will try to contact the Order. It’s kind of her last trial before Tor blood-bonds with her.”
 

“Do you think she’ll try?”
 

“I don’t know. But we can make it look like she did. All we need to do is let them see you talking to her, even if you’re not saying—”
 

“Wait. How would they know who I am?”
 

“Anock has a file on you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; I thought you assumed ...”
 

“No. No, I didn’t.” Desiree was looking pale and a little panicked.
 

“Don’t worry. They don’t have much information at all, just what you look like and that you’re Oberon’s sister. Nobody knows about Crian or me. And in this case, the fact that they recognize you will actually help. Here’s the plan.”

Chapter 52

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
Three months later

In mid-November, the pride moved to their favorite winter estate, near the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, situated on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula on the coastal strip along the Red Sea. Sharm el-Sheikh offered endless days of shopping and exploring, and warm evenings of entertainment and cool breezes—and it also boasted some of the most picturesque coral reefs in the world.

Tor took Arianna scuba diving soon after they arrived, and then just like that they were going every day. The pride’s small yacht would drop anchor near a dive site and one of the bodyguards would patrol the surroundings on a jet ski to make sure they were safe and undisturbed.
 

Tor could tell that the pride couldn’t comprehend his sudden passion for scuba diving. He’d always enjoyed it—they all had—but not with anywhere near the kind of obsession he was now showing. He let them think that the enthusiasm was coming from Arianna, which wasn’t technically a lie, just an incomplete truth. The whole truth was that it wasn’t the diving itself that drove Tor into the water every day; it was the fact that being underwater offered a temporary reprieve from the terrible bloodlust wracking his body. He didn’t know how it worked—maybe the water dulled something that usually flowed through the air between them—but whatever it was, he’d take it. He’d managed to avoid blood-bonding with Arianna, and he was determined to keep it that way. Meanwhile, though, the bloodlust had been getting worse and worse over the last three months, to the point where it was testing his grip on sanity and sometimes he thought it would literally kill him.
 

Except for that, and his lingering worry about Arianna’s possible connections with the Order, the three months traveling through Europe had been blissful. Marcus had been so protective of his daughter that Arianna hadn’t traveled much, and it was lovely to experience the continent through her fresh eyes. He reveled in the challenge of finding new ways to delight her. The hardest part was having to let her go so that she could spend time with Theores and Ismen, allowing Anock’s plan to unfold by giving her opportunities to contact the Order.
 

He consoled himself about having to spend so much time away from her by finding new ways to delight her at night, in bed. As a consolation, it was pretty damn good; she was eager to try new things, to give and take pleasure, and she seemed to trust him completely. And more than anything else, he was happy that it was
her
sharing his bed, sharing her body with him.

But it also made the bloodlust even worse.
 

Actually, it had gotten to the point where everything—except, of course, the scuba diving—seemed to be making the bloodlust even worse, and nothing was alleviating it. The longer he kept her with him, sleeping in the same bed, making love to her, spending days with her, the harder it was for him to contain the bloodlust.

The usual weekly feeding from the bloodstock supply had stopped being satisfying long ago. He experimented with adding a second feeding, and then a third, and now he fed every day. The pride’s bloodstock couldn’t keep up with the extra demand he was placing on them, and the pride had to buy two more bloodstock to keep up. Although no one had said anything to him about it, it was embarrassing; it made him feel like an out-of-control youth, not a centuries-old leader of his people. And it didn’t even work.
 

He had to admit the truth. It wasn’t the quantity of blood that he was or wasn’t getting that was causing the problem; it was the pull on his soul to blood-bond. Arianna had offered him her vein many times over the past three months, but each time, he’d turned her down. He was determined to endure whatever it took to win her forever. Anock had proposed giving her three months; well, it had been three months, and Arianna hadn’t attempted to contact the Order. It seemed that Tor’s sufferings would soon be coming to an end.

* * *

Anock was waiting in Tor’s study when the King came in for his daily feeding. Tor was wearing a black silk robe and had obviously just slipped out of bed. That wasn’t unusual; they took all precautions to keep Arianna from witnessing the feeding, and Tor often waited for her to fall asleep. Of course, she knew they kept bloodstock and fed on their blood, but there was a world of difference between knowing that it happened and actually witnessing it.
 

Maybe,
Anock thought,
I should come by at a better time. When he’s more ... dressed. More prepared.