Adam (7 page)

But there was something in her eyes right then, something Leah would never have thought to attribute to Jasmine.

Vulnerabiity.

“Can you do it?” Jasmine asked.

“C-can I do what?”

“You know what!” she said impatiently. She reached out and took hold of Leah’s face by her chin. “If I could go back in time and change one thing, I would see to it that Prince Damien never met the Princess Syreena.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she slowly exhaled. “But that would be a selfish thing. A thing designed only to help him and myself. Perhaps even her as well, when you think about it. But you ...” Jasmine stared hard into Leah’s eyes, and Leah felt the soft coaxing power of the Vampire’s influence. It felt like being wrapped in a strange sort of warmth, something safe and caring. “Can you do this thing? Do you have the power?”

Leah simply nodded in reply.

“No,” Jasmine breathed, an expression of unbelievable pain lancing across her features. “The past must stay in the past where it belongs. Do you understand me, little half-breed? You cannot play with time in such ways! You will destroy people and you will torment others. You could make things a thousand times worse than they are now! Do not meddle with the past!”

Leah was afraid as the powerful Vampire raged fiercely at her. This was no moralistic scolding like her other mentors had given. They had frequently hammered at her about the massive responsibilities that would come with her element. There was no other Demon of Time in the world and had never been one in history. She was the groundbreaker. But Elijah was very fond of telling her that just because she could do something didn’t mean that she should. He told her he could become a category four hurricane that would destroy everything around him, but that didn’t mean he should do it. In fact, the damage path would be a very obvious reason why he shouldn’t.

Messing with Time could potentially create horrible damage paths. Some would be immediately visible, and others would not show themselves for years.

“I just thought ...” Leah argued weakly. “Maybe if I could borrow ... for just a minute ...”

The young girl teared up and immediately tried to hide her weakness from Jasmine. The Vampire softened a little, understanding very clearly why the teenaged Demon would want to change her history. As Jasmine herself had said, there were things she wished she could change as well, people she would save—people she would protect. But it wasn’t her place to try to go back to fashion the world in a way she thought it ought to be.

“There is danger in the idea that we can create a designer life for ourselves by manipulating this thing or that thing in our past,” Jasmine said gently. “You might save your parents with one act, but that same act could end up killing Elijah, destroying the political stability of the Nightwalkers, or—I don’t know—any number of variables. I understand you have been given these powers for a reason, and perhaps that reason is to alter moments in time to create a better future, but you are too young to be making these decisions now. And you certainly shouldn’t be making them on your own. Your power is new yet. You don’t know all of what you will be able to do one day. At the very least I must beg you to wait. See how time unfolds. Have patience.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable request.

Just an unbearable one.

Leah nodded in agreement, her face full of color and tracked with tears. Jasmine could feel the young girl’s frustration. It eddied into her psychically like a powerful, stormy ocean tide. It churned wildly with her emotions as all of the plans Leah had been forming were now suddenly dashed upon the rocks of responsibility and morality.

Strange that it had been Jasmine to lecture about restraint and responsibility. Vampires were not known for coloring inside the lines and fully behaving themselves. But Jasmine had seen too much damage done with out-of-control Nightwalker power. The rogue members of her own society who thought they could go around picking up powers by drinking the blood of innocent Nightwalkers disgusted her. It was one thing to dance along the edges of morality and quite something else to dive over the line again and again, leaving a path of damage. This young girl was a prime example of the harm that could be done when power wasn’t properly tempered or respectfully held in check.

“I promise I ... I won’t do anything ... unless I know for certain ...” Leah stammered around her words, and Jasmine could appreciate how hard it was for her to rein herself in.

“Look, kiddo, only you can know in your heart what is right and what is wrong, what is selfishly motivated and what is truly for the greater good.” Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Great, now I sound like Noah and Damien. But if you really want the best guidance around, go see Noah. He has walked both edges of the line you are teetering on. And he used you to do it. Ask him how he feels about it. Ask him why he hasn’t thought about doing what you want to do.” Jasmine lifted a shoulder. “Or better yet, ask him why he has thought about it but never approached you with the idea, because I promise you, the first person this would have occurred to is Noah.”

With that instruction and a gentle tug on a curl at Leah’s temple, Jasmine turned to leave the young girl to her own conscience and devices. But at the last moment, the girl grabbed her by the hand and made her turn back. She waited until their eyes met, her gaze earnest and fierce.

“Is that true? What you said? Is the moment Damien met Syreena truly the one moment you would change if you could? Is that where you think all of this went wrong?” She opened a hand to indicate the screwed-up world they were living in.

“If Damien had never met her ... or if he had never followed her the night she’d been kidnapped ... Vampires would not be drinking the blood of Nightwalkers. Before the moment Damien drank Syreena’s blood, the act had been taboo—” Jasmine stopped, took a breath. “But I lie. Because the Exchange, the act of taking other Nightwalker blood and then those Nightwalkers taking our blood, was in books in the library we discovered after Elijah mated with Siena. We would have discovered it eventually. So perhaps I would go further back and keep the library from ever being found. That would perhaps mean keeping Ruth from looking for it, which drew our attention to it. So perhaps it’s all about Ruth.” Jasmine shook her head. “You see? You see how I could play this game? How do you choose? What gives you the right to choose? You believe in Destiny, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Leah said quietly.

“Then you have to believe that things happen for a reason, and even if you change something, Destiny will find a way to fulfill her needs.”

“You mean that even if I kept my parents from dying in that cavern, Destiny would find a way to claim their lives regardless?”

“Possibly. Like I said, talk to Noah. He defied Destiny to take his mate. See what he says about the whole thing.”

Leah nodded and this time it was she who turned away, hurrying off, perhaps to find a way to do exactly that.

Leah could easily have gone to her female
Siddah
and asked her to teleport her right into Noah’s living room, but the young Time Demon needed to think . . . or perhaps was dragging her feet. So she was wandering less-traveled caverns, giving herself the time she needed to be alone with everything swirling through her mind.

It was a war between desires and responsibilities.

From the moment the idea had entered her head that perhaps she could redeem herself in the eyes of all those around her who must count her responsible for the deaths of her parents, she had been moving headlong into the possibility. Or so it seemed. She had actually toyed with the concept over and over again through the years, but it seemed every time it entered her mind, her
Siddah
would come up with some kind of lecture about the responsibility of power. It was almost as though they had read her mind, sensed her intentions, and were warning her off the path she wanted to travel. That might be a bit of paranoia, because although Legna was a strong empath, she wasn’t a telepath, and neither was Elijah. So she had to assume it was Destiny herself dropping very strong hints in her lap, warning her to leave well enough alone; that she would only make bad situations worse if she meddled in the way things had unfolded.

But Leah watched the world around her quietly and carefully and continually came to the same conclusion. Things would be very different if only Jacob and Bella had not died that day while trying to protect her from Ruth and Nicodemous. What if, she continually asked, someone had come to their aid? What if that someone had been strong enough to defeat Ruth and Nico once and for all?

The question had then always been
who
? Who would be strong enough to do something like that? Noah? Leah couldn’t take that risk. What if he wasn’t? What if Noah was killed along with her parents? Then what would become of them all under the heavy loss of their King?

But now, suddenly, she had her candidate. Someone who, if taken at the moment of his death, would never be missed throughout time. Someone as powerful as her father. Someone who had it in his blood to fight and defeat a lawbreaking Demon. Someone whose death, should he die alongside her parents, simply would not matter in the grand scheme of things.

But just when she was ready to act, all these warning signs were being flung up in her face again. Jasmine, of all people, being one of them. What were the odds that the Vampire would be there, in that moment, overhearing her and Seth arguing? In Lycanthrope territory? They were infinitesimal.

Leah’s eyes began to water with frustrated emotion. She knew exactly what Noah would say to her if she went to him. He would caution her just as Jasmine had. He might even act more strongly to prevent her from doing anything. This was why she had never voiced the idea before. She was wise enough, even at her young age, to understand the far-reaching ramifications that might come with her gifts if she used them without caution and forethought.

“Such a thoughtful child.”

The compliment was said so snidely that Leah immediately jerked her attention to the speaker. She had been so absorbed in her moral dilemma, she hadn’t realized just how far out of the reach of safety she had traveled.

And she had not realized she had walked right into Ruth’s waiting arms.

“Now let us see,” Ruth mused, her china blue eyes fixing on Leah in a way that paralyzed her. When Jasmine had entered Leah’s mind, it had been almost like a seduction, like falling into the warm embrace of a lover. But having Ruth seize hold of her mind was something cold and terrible. Leah felt her body go dead, as if it weren’t any longer a part of herself. And in a sense it wasn’t. Ruth had cut off her ability to send and receive nerve impulses within her body.

Leah felt herself falling, dropping to the stone floor like a sack of potatoes. The deadly beautiful Demon moved over her, putting her hands on her knees as she peered down at Leah. Ruth’s blond hair was swept to the side and twisted into a fat braid that draped off her shoulder, a strangely incongruous blue ribbon woven into it and tying it off in a big bow. She wore an expensive, luscious evening dress that accented her shoulders and dipped low in front. The midnight blue silk was peppered with sequins that flattered the curves of her figure. But the wide neckline of the dress also accented the vicious bruising and bite marks along both sides of the Demon traitor’s neck.

As if the evidence of her Vampire lover’s existence called him forth, Nicodemous drifted out of the shadows and appeared at Ruth’s side. The smell of them together made Leah gag, making her realize that not all of her senses had been taken from her. What she smelled was the rottenness that filled the flesh of any creature who dabbled in black magics. Selfish, offensive magics. The past decade had shown the Nightwalker world that it was not always so. Natural-born Witches who used well-meant magic in selfless and defensive ways remained clean-smelling and pure. But once they began to dabble in darker arts, they became addicted to them like a poisonous drug, and that drug made them stink of their evilness to any other Nightwalker that came near.

Ruth and Nico reeked of their addiction, their eyes shining in a peculiar way that warned you they were probably a little bit insane from all their power mongering, from all the ways they had altered themselves over the years as they grew stronger and stronger.

“Well, listen to that,” Nico mused as he, too, leaned forward to peer at her. “She’s barely old enough for Fostering and yet her mind reeks of that self-important righteously moral propaganda you Demons are so fond of spewing.”

“Oh, but more than that,” Ruth whispered in a breathless way. “She’s thinking about
us
, Nico, and how she can go about getting rid of
us
.”

Panic infused every cell in Leah’s body. Suddenly all the implications of being helpless at the hands of the Demon and, more importantly, the Vampire, who could potentially absorb her power, struck Leah. Since a Vampire could only gain one power from drinking the blood of a Nightwalker, and Leah only had one power to speak of, then that meant ... It made her sick to her stomach to think that Ruth and Nico might obtain her ability to move through time. Suddenly the small ramifications of her one somewhat selfish act meant nothing in the face of the damage these two could do if they gained control over Time and began to leap back and forth within it, changing whatever they wanted to, sneaking up on unwitting historical figures who could never be prepared for their coming.