A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21) (7 page)

The Drizans had to stop with their raid.

I faced the agitated Cyrus. Even though I knew this monster would never agree to it, I couldn’t help but try. “Your lordship, we must call this off. Your actions could be greatly injuring my son, for if Nuriya speaks the truth, he is bonded to a much worse force than the jinn.”

The tension that had been building between Cyrus and me since I’d entered Nuriya’s bedroom while he tortured her reached breaking point. He whirled around to glare at Jeriad.

“What is this, dragon?” he seethed, fire in his eyes. “I cannot tolerate this vampire any longer. None of this was part of our deal. We agreed to extricate the young man from the Nasiris’ clutches, and that was all. What we choose to do with these traitors is none of your business.”

I looked pleadingly at Jeriad, but what could the dragon shifter do? We had already entered into an agreement with the Drizans on the strength of the goodwill the dragons had built with the jinn over the years. Their willingness to bend to the dragons’ requests only stretched so far.

“Please,” I croaked, not sure what other option I had left but to beg for any scrap of compassion this hard-hearted jinni might possess. “Just… stop harassing the Nasiris. At least for now.”

Cyrus shrugged me off. He moved closer to Nuriya and replaced the gag in her mouth even as she sobbed. Then he turned his back on us completely and looked around at his jinn companions. “We return now to the palace. Make sure that not a single Nasiri gets left behind.”

He scooped up Nuriya again in his arms and, shooting one last glare my way, vanished. He was followed a moment later by the rest of the Drizan jinn, carrying the Nasiri captives in their arms, leaving me, Derek and our small army standing alone in the magnificent atrium.

Jeriad approached Derek and me, his piercing, aquamarine-blue eyes meeting mine. “Queen Sofia. Backing out of an agreement with jinn is simply not done.”

“So where is his end of the agreement?” Rose asked. “He’s supposed to find Ben for us.”

Jeriad glanced at my daughter. “I suspect that he sensed the truth in Nuriya’s words, that Benjamin is no longer in The Oasis. His agreement was to break the bond and return Ben to us, on the understanding that Ben would actually be here. He never said he’d go hunting elsewhere for your brother….”

I stared at my husband, and I could see from his blood-drained face that the same question was running through both our minds.
What now?

Benjamin was trapped somewhere in the supernatural dimension, and if what Nuriya said came to pass, Bahir would leave him, and he wouldn’t have enough protection to stop the Elder from calling him to Cruor…
What will become of my son?

I
wanted
to resist taking Nuriya’s words seriously. I wanted to believe she’d spoken them solely out of desperation, in an attempt to save her and her family, and Benjamin was still here somewhere in The Oasis. Yet another part of me sensed the truth in the jinni’s words, even despite her desperate situation. What she’d told us about Ben just… made sense. I recalled the vision that Ben had shortly before we’d all left The Shade for The Oasis. He’d described Cruor in vivid detail, and of a dark presence engulfing him as a newborn. The pieces of Benjamin’s mystery fell into place in my mind.

And yet I wasn’t ready to resign myself to Ben’s fate.

“We need to do a thorough search of this place,” I spoke up, glancing around at our companions. “Search every nook and cranny.”

We split up and began making our way around the massive atrium, searching through sprawling apartment after apartment. We checked every room, in cupboards, under beds, but Ben was nowhere to be found down here.

“Perhaps he’s being kept in the upper atrium,” Aiden muttered.

“Let’s search there now,” Sofia replied anxiously.

We hurried back into the kitchen and climbed up the narrow staircase toward the prison above.

“Maybe he’s in one of these cells,” Sofia whispered, gazing around the dimly lit prison corridors. This network of cells was like a labyrinth. There were so many small chambers that it took us a long time to complete the task, even with all of us splitting up in search parties and moving with supernatural speed. Ashley straying from Landis and getting lost didn’t help.

Once we were certain that Benjamin was not down here in the cells, our last hope remained with the upper atrium. My throat tightened as we climbed the final staircase leading up to the prison’s exit.
The atrium above is where Jeramiah lives.
I still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of Lucas having a son, much less the idea of meeting my nephew in person. I wondered how much Jeramiah would look like my brother, and whether he would sound like him.

I swallowed as we entered the upper atrium’s gardens. This place looked different now compared to when the Maslens had inhabited it all those years ago. It was a bizarre feeling to be standing here, in the same place where that fateful night occurred. The night I’d rescued Sofia from the hands of Borys Maslen, the night that Benjamin Hudson and my brother had lost their lives.

“I suggest we enter the gardens to keep ourselves positioned centrally while we scope this place out,” Aiden spoke up.

We took his suggestion and entered a rose garden nearby, eyeing the various levels of the atrium. We’d been to this upper atrium only recently, but we had been trapped by the powers of the jinn, and we hadn’t had a chance to walk around and explore the place. Before we launched into another search for Ben, we needed to get a better feeling for the scope of the atrium. Because looking for him here wouldn’t be as simple—it was packed with vampires. Though there were no bloodsuckers to be seen walking around. I guessed that spotting the Drizan jinn had given them such a scare that they were still locked in their apartments, not daring to come out.

We wound our way through an orchard and several ornamental gardens before we arrived at a large pond. Rose stopped near the edge of it and stared down at a slab of stone set among the green grass. I walked toward her to see what it was. A memorial stone.
Lucas Dominic Novak
. Benjamin had mentioned this memorial stone during his recounting of his stay here in The Oasis. Jeramiah must have installed the slab in honor of his father.

We finished passing through the gardens, arriving at the other end of the atrium. Still, none of us detected a single vampire out on the verandas.

I feared that disturbing them in their homes would quickly descend into a fight. They were spooked after seeing us accompanied by the Drizans, but if we started barging into their apartments, they would get defensive. We had to handle the situation delicately, in spite of how desperate Sofia and I were.

“We should just go around knocking on their doors,” Sofia said, eyeing the nearest apartment to us. “We’ll address them calmly and explain that we’re not here to cause any trouble—we’re merely looking for Ben.”

“Or Joseph, which was what Ben called himself during his stay with these vampires,” Rose added. I wasn’t sure if the vampires were still ignorant of Benjamin’s real identity or if the jinn had finally informed them.

The vampires and I split up again into small groups, while the dragon shifters remained in the gardens. I didn’t think that bringing those menacing men to the vampires’ doorsteps would help.

We began knocking on doors, and surprisingly, our method worked. They were alarmed to see us, and asked many questions, but nobody tried to fight us. Nobody knew where Joseph, or Benjamin, was either. We insisted on searching inside their apartments, which they allowed us to do, albeit begrudgingly, as long as we were quick about it. They also warned us that if we dared touch a single one of their humans, they’d wage war on us. We were accompanied by dragon shifters, and we would have won in a struggle, but I reminded myself of how The Shade used to be, before Sofia came along. If we freed the humans from the cells, these vampires would only find new innocent victims tomorrow. Surviving on human blood was how they chose to live, and as much as we had all changed in The Shade, attempting to force our rules on them wouldn’t change a thing. As Sofia and I discussed the matter, I could see that the suggestion of simply wiping out these Oasis vampires was near the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say it. She never was one to encourage violence as a solution, and she knew what slaughtering my brother’s son and his entire coven would do to me.

Reluctantly, we left the matter behind and continued moving from chamber to chamber. We even came across a handful of witches, though they didn’t attempt to harm us with their magic. We avoided answering as many questions as possible and moved about the rooms in silence.

In the end, I didn’t find myself face to face with Jeramiah.

But we didn’t find Ben either.

After one last sweep around the layered verandas, we admitted defeat and headed back to the desert.

“What about the camel stable up in the desert?” Rose suggested desperately.

Although none of us really expected him to be there, we searched the camel stable. Ben wasn’t there.

Sofia and I locked eyes. There was no point in fooling ourselves any longer. We weren’t going to find Benjamin in The Oasis.

“I believe that Nuriya was speaking truth.” Jeriad spoke up, breaking through the tense silence. “We dragons can detect liars by a mere glance into their eyes. And I didn’t detect untruth in Nuriya’s gaze. I believe that your son indeed left here and is in the supernatural dimension.”

But we had no idea where. Or what state he would be in now, if Bahir had left him as Nuriya had feared.

I clutched a palm to my forehead, closing my eyes and trying to focus my mind.

I let out a breath.

“All right,” I said heavily. “With Jeriad’s assurance, we’re going to assume that what Nuriya told Sofia is correct. We’ve been wasting our time… I have not the first clue in hell what we can do now, if anything, to help my son. But before we do anything, we ought to return to The Shade.”

A
s we traveled back
to our island, the dragons’ supernatural speed didn’t seem fast enough. As I’d admitted to everyone, I didn’t have any semblance of a plan for how to help my son. And the thought that we had just made things worse for him by getting the Nasiris kidnapped by the Drizans was eating away at me. What would happen to him without the protection of two jinn? Would the Elder really manage to draw him back to Cruor? The latter shouldn’t even have been a question, for I knew the kind of powers the Elders could have over a person—I knew them too well. I was just fumbling for some hope in this predicament.

When we finally reached The Shade, I was glad that it was overcast again. The spell that Ibrahim had cast over us to keep us in shadow while we were gone had lasted till now, but I didn’t want any hunters detecting our movements.

The dragons remained above the clouds until we were past the boundary, then descended upon The Shade, silently and gracefully. They touched down in the clearing before the Port.

We had been gone longer than I’d hoped, and the first thing I wanted to do was check on my sister and Xavier. I wondered if Vivienne might have given birth already. But aside from checking that she was in good health, and possibly meeting my new niece or nephew, I needed to see how they’d been holding up since we’d been gone.

Sofia and I hurried through the forest to the couple’s penthouse. The lights were on, but as we knocked, nobody answered. Sofia couldn’t detect even the slightest sound of anyone inside. The door hadn’t been locked. I pushed it open and we stepped inside. We moved from room to room, seeing if they might have left a note for us as to their whereabouts in case we returned.

“Derek,” Sofia called from Vivienne and Xavier’s bedroom. I hurried to the room to find her pointing to a wet patch on the bed. “I’m guessing Viv’s water broke already. Maybe she’s been taken to the Sanctuary?”

For all we knew, Corrine was still mysteriously absent from The Shade. But it was possible that Vivienne had been taken there to be tended by other witches.

We descended from the treehouse and ran back through the woods toward the witch’s residence. We bumped into Rose and Caleb, who followed us to the Sanctuary.

When we arrived outside the door, my spine tingled as my ears caught the crying of an infant. Sofia gasped.

“Oh, my God, it’s happened already!” Rose exclaimed.

Worries about my son momentarily drifted into the background as excitement overtook me. I forced open the front door, too impatient to wait for somebody to come to answer it, and barged into the entrance hall. We hurried toward the crying, stopping outside one of the bedrooms.

“Vivienne?” I spoke up, a slight tremble in my voice.

The door flung open a moment later, and we found ourselves standing face to face with Corrine. Her thick brown locks were wrapped tightly above her head in a bun, beads of perspiration shining in the roots of her hair.

Her eyes widened, and a look of relief washed over her face. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back. Come in! Come in!”

We rushed in to find Vivienne lying on a double bed, cradling a blanket-clad baby in her arms. Xavier sat next to her on the bed. Vivienne looked drained and exhausted, but both of the new parents were positively glowing with happiness.

My throat tightened. My voice choked up, and I could hardly even greet them. I broke out into a smile, joy billowing up within me.

I hurried to Vivienne’s bedside and kissed her forehead while looking down at her beautiful baby.

“A boy or a girl?” Sofia asked, arriving by my side along with Rose.

“A girl,” Vivienne replied, tears moistening the corners of her eyes as she gazed at her baby.

“How late are we?” Rose asked, smiling at the baby girl.

“A few hours,” Xavier replied. His eyes had the same glistening quality as his wife’s. They both looked in a daze, lost in their own little bubble with their new child.

Vivienne raised the baby from her chest and handed her to me. I held her in my arms, taking in her features. Fine strands of dark hair covered her head and her eyes were bright blue, closer to my mother’s—and my—eye color than to Vivienne or Xavier’s. I dipped down and planted a kiss on her tiny nose.

“So you’ve named her Aurora?” I asked.

“We thought that’s what we’d name her… Xavier and I decided on that name months ago if we had a girl. But when she came out and I looked into her eyes for the first time… I wanted to name her after our mother, Derek.” Vivienne’s eyes shimmered with melancholy even as she smiled. “Victoria.”

Victoria Vaughn.

We had lost our mother hundreds of years ago. Her death—caused by a vampire—had been the catalyst to my becoming a hunter before my siblings and I were eventually turned into vampires. My mother had died so long ago that she was but a distant memory. I had been only a teenager in human years, and so for the vast majority of my life, she had been absent.

But the look in my twin sister’s eyes stirred up memories of Victoria Lisette Novak. Memories of a beautiful, strong, dutiful woman. A woman my father Gregor Novak hadn’t deserved. I wished that she could be here now, that she could hold her new granddaughter in her arms and remark on how similar their eye colors were.

“I’m glad,” Rose said, her voice breaking through the haze of my memory. “I prefer the name Victoria.”

My daughter was standing several feet away from me, behind Caleb. I had sensed her take a step back as I’d picked up the baby, and now she had moved to the furthest end of the room, where she stood watching the scene. She was wise to do that. Although she’d made great progress in controlling her bloodlust, she still hadn’t been a vampire for long, and the blood of babies was particularly sweet.

I placed Victoria into Sofia’s ready arms, giving her a chance to greet her niece. Sofia kissed her puffy cheeks and stood with her a while before handing her back to Vivienne. My sister readjusted the blanket before resting Victoria against her chest.

We moved from the bedside and took seats around the room just as someone knocked on the door. Rose, being closest to the door, pulled it open to reveal Aiden standing in the doorway. He held a bouquet of bright yellow sunflowers. He’d come better prepared than us.

“Congratulations,” he exclaimed. Corrine took the flowers from Aiden and arranged them in a vase on Vivienne’s bedside table while my father-in-law approached the bed. He gestured to the flowers. “I didn’t know if I’d find you with a boy or a girl, so I opted for a neutral color.”

“Thank you.” Vivienne grinned, allowing Aiden to greet the newest member of our family.

“So how has everything been since we’ve been away?” I asked.

Xavier tore his eyes away from Victoria to face me. “Other than the arrival of Victoria, quite uneventful.”

“What happened with you?” Vivienne asked anxiously.

I didn’t want to bring up the news of Benjamin now. Not on one of the happiest days of my sister’s life.

“It was… eventful,” I muttered.

“Well, did you manage to reclaim Ben or not? Where is he?” Vivienne pressed.

I was relieved when Corrine came to my rescue.

“Vivienne,” she said, her voice taking on the tone of a scolding schoolteacher as she eyed my sister sternly. “As your midwife, I insist that you keep your focus on your baby and on your recovery. No other topic shall be discussed in this room until you’re fully recovered and strong enough to move back into your penthouse with Victoria. Okay?”

Vivienne was clearly not “okay” with it, but Corrine had a way of speaking with finality and my twin didn’t argue. She just pursed her lips and nodded reluctantly, while her eyes remained on me, silently pleading for more information about our trip.

Corrine turned to Sofia and me. “I’d like to have a private word with you two,” she said. Her expression had turned stony.

Aiden, Rose and Caleb remained in the room while Sofia and I followed Corrine out of the door. She led us along the hallway and into a sitting room. She made sure the door was shut before joining us in the center of the room. Clearly, she didn’t want to run any risk of Vivienne overhearing, even with Vivienne’s weaker human ears.

What exactly is so secret?
My stomach tensed as I took a seat on the couch with Sofia while Corrine began to pace up and down on the rug in front of us.

“What happened to you, Corrine?” Sofia asked. “We were looking everywhere for you on the island, and then it occurred to us that you might’ve gotten trapped in The Oasis.”

“I was trapped in The Oasis. And if it weren’t for River taking compassion on a poor dove locked in a cage, I would likely still be there.”

“They turned you into a bird like the other witches?” Sofia asked. “How long have you been back?”

“I believe I returned the same day you left. We just missed each other. I returned with River because Benjamin requested it. We would have stayed with him, but he insisted.”

I leaned forward in my seat. “What’s happening with him?”

“He…” Corrine drew in a deep breath, clasping her hands together. “He discovered something about himself. He went to visit an oracle and… Oh, God. I hate to be the one to break this news to you… Ben was marked by an Elder as a newborn, and has been bonded with him ever since.”

Even though Nuriya had already revealed this to Sofia and me, my breath still hitched to hear it again, this time from Corrine’s lips. It made the situation seem that much more real. That much more inescapable.

“We know, Corrine,” Sofia said quietly.

The witch’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “What? How?”

Sofia glanced my way before beginning to recount to Corrine everything that had happened to us since we left. From the meeting with the Drizans, to the storming of The Oasis, to the eventual discovery of what had happened to our son and how we had just made things so much worse for him.

Corrine sank into an armchair. “Oh, no. I had a bad feeling all along about you leaving to break the jinn’s bond before I had a chance to talk to you. Even despite them keeping Ben as a prisoner, I’d seen how the Nasiris were helping him, and God knows that boy needs help.”

“But what now?” Sofia asked, her voice strained. “What can we possibly do to help my son? Nuriya said that without a second jinni, he won’t have enough protection to stop the Elder from luring him back to Cruor.” Her voice cracked and trailed off into a sob.

Corrine gazed at us with sad eyes. “For all my years’ worth of knowledge, I don’t know, honey. I just don’t know. I’ve already discussed the situation in depth with Ibrahim, and he’s just as clueless.” She paused, and leaned forward to lay a hand on Sofia’s knee. Corrine glanced from my wife to me. “You know, the last words Ben spoke to me before I left The Oasis with River were that this was a journey he had to go on alone. Perhaps he was right. You two instigating the Drizans to damage the Nasiris’ protection of Ben, perhaps that was like… an arrangement of destiny. Maybe he really is supposed to go through this alone.”

I clenched my jaw. In my mind, the question wasn’t whether or not this was his destiny. The question was, could my son survive this on his own?

But whatever the answer was, in a sense it didn’t matter. Each time we tried to help our son, it only ever seemed to backfire. He was worse off now than before our “help”. Maybe Corrine was right. Maybe we just needed to accept that this journey was one Ben had to make alone.