Amaranth (21 page)

She raised a hand to his face and swiped his cheek, her red
nails clawing it like a lion dominating its prey. “I have secrets!” he cried
out, feeling his torn flesh. “Secrets about the resistance! I beg of you,
please, no!”

Smearing the blood across his face, “Farewell,” was all she
said before she snapped her neck to the side and sunk her fangs into him. One
quick bite sent him to the floor; his body instantly shriveled and
deteriorated. She prompted Victor to remove his body from the room, then
fluffed her long black curls with her fingernails and readjusted her gown
before she turned to face me. My knees trembled as she swung around to meet me,
my mind’s eye still fixed on the granite stairway where Andrew’s lifeless body
lay. He was here, and then he was gone. His absence should have been a relief,
but it only intensified my fear. Now it was just Samira and me. Alone.

“Now then, where were we?” She wiped the blood from her
mouth, licked her fingers.

“I don’t know, I …”

“Ah, yes. Your request.” She beamed, floated back and forth
as she spoke. “It seems you have wasted your time and have taken quite a
gamble.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You made the assumption Gavin would be punished. That you
could take his place. You see, he is alive, and I do not intend to punish him.
I must allow him to go into exile. However, he is guilty under my law, and will
serve me in place of physical punishment. As for you my dear, a mortal in this
place has two options. Live or die. You may not leave mortal, you see. You
become a liability to our secrecy if you do. To live, you must become one of us.
And what an honor it is to join our family.”

“I wouldn’t be a liability if you let me go.… I would never
tell anyone, I swear—”

“I have no proof of that. The only mortals who know about us
outside of this place are changed, or killed immediately. The relationship you
and Gavin have begun is most forbidden, and such a unique situation must be
handled quickly and definitively. Leaving is
not
a choice for you unless you are changed, do you understand?”

My eyes locked on hers. I fought to remain submissive, but
my suspicion burned. “Yes. But … why give me the gift of immortality? I mean,
why spare me?”

“Your very presence exudes endless potential. It is
infectious,” she inhaled strongly, as if taking in my scent. “Such vitality,
such perseverance. You would be far more useful to me joining our family than
you would be providing me with a single meal. The choice is yours. What will it
be?”

Gliding toward me, she took my chin in her hand. “If you
truly desire to take Gavin’s place, I will spare him his sentence of servitude
and admit him to Amaranth where his curse will be lifted, as he has requested.
You may serve in his place. Unless, of course, you prefer the other option.…”

“No.” I met her hazy stare, ready to commit. I knew I was
interfering with Gavin’s plans, but it would be worth it, if it meant letting
him go free, seeing him human again, just as he wanted. What Samira presented
to me was more of a trade, more desirable even. If I accepted the offer, I’d
still have a chance to be with him again, would be here to witness the
destruction of the evil incarnate that stood before me. I needed no more
convincing. “Change me.”

“It is done. You’ll be escorted to his living quarters
immediately.” With a quick swirling of her lifted skirt, she retired to her
throne and gestured to the wolves. As I turned to follow them toward the
doorway, she called at me to stop, leered at her long, sharp nails as she
spoke.

“One more thing, my pet. I almost forgot. In choosing to
take another servant’s place, you are marked. You belong to me, which means you
will not have the privilege of living in exile.” She met my eyes with a smug
smile. “Just so we’re clear on that.”

The wolves led me up an exhausting spiral stairway to the
castle’s highest tower. When we reached the top of the staircase, another large
guard in a gray hooded cloak met us with an aloof stare.

“Dali.
Akim
. Release,” he
instructed the animals. They obeyed, retreated elegantly back down the stairway
to return to their queen. He let me walk ahead of him, leisurely strolled a few
feet behind me. We passed cell after cell, each wooden door sealed shut with
only a single opening to see through and complete with rod iron bars. Living
quarters? This was a
prison
.

I didn’t know how I would react when I saw him, and I was
far more concerned with how he would react when he saw me, knew I’d have to
talk fast and convince him to comply with the deal I made with Samira. What he
was here to attempt was far too risky, and although I wasn’t sure of the fate
he held in Amaranth, I knew it might cost him his life. I had to at least try
to make him see the reality of the situation more clearly.

The guard came from behind me and snatched my arm, spun me
around to face one of the cell doors. Reaching into his cloak, he retrieved a
pair of chain handcuffs and grabbed my wrists, forced them in front of me to
bind them.

“You have five minutes.”

“Only five minutes?”

“Not open for negotiating,” he breathed in my face, his
fangs hovering near my neck.

He sorted through his keys until he found the correct one
and lazily slipped it into the door’s keyhole, turned the latch with ease.

“Here’s your
prince
.” The
door swung open and he rolled his eyes, shoved me from behind into the cell.
Snatching the door shut and locking it behind me, he left me with my missing
piece. The moonlight aided my vision in the dark cell, glimmered through a
barred window on the stone wall. My eyes adjusted quickly and I focused on a
lump of matter pitifully hunched over in the corner. The anticipation in my
heart instantly dropped. Propped up with his head down, there sat Gavin on a
scattered bed of straw, weak, with tattered clothing and a ghastly bruise on
his face.

I shuffled forward, in disbelief at his condition. “Gavin,
wake up. Are you okay?” I kneeled down and shook him, thankful to see his eyes
roll open.

“No, no, no.” Drowsy, he flinched, horrified to see me. “You
can’t
be here. Camille, tell me I’m
hallucinating. You can’t …” he reached for me, his face heavy with
disappointment when his hand touched my skin, felt it was real.

“I came here for you,” I said. “You never should’ve taken
off like that— Are Gabe and Audrey all right? I thought you weren’t being
punished, but you’re starving and locked up.” I reached for his face, eyed the
dreadful cell walls.

“Stop. What the hell are you doing here?” He pulled himself
up and stepped close to me now; his eyes darted from the cell door to the cell
window. He immediately grabbed my handcuffs and gave them a sharp yank, let my
hands free. The effort exhausted him. “You’re going to get both of us killed,
what were you thinking?”

“I know, calm down, that’s what I’m here to talk to you
about. I ran into Andrew on the way here, but he’s dead now. And I worked
things out with Samira.…”

“You
met
Samira?”

“Yes. I know this is dangerous, but listen—”

“You can’t be here,” he repeated, scanned our surroundings
again. “You shouldn’t be so close. I haven’t fed—”

“You have to
listen
to me. We
only have five minutes.”

“Five minutes until what?”

“Until they take me back to Samira. She’s going to change
me, I told her I’d take your place if she let you go. You won’t have to serve
her. She’ll lift your curse.” I swallowed and placed my hand on his chest, let
him know I wasn’t afraid.

His body stiffened. “Change you. Camille, no. No, you don’t
understand. You can’t
work things out
with her,
she doesn’t do deals. She’ll kill you anyway.”

“You don’t know that. She was certain, she said I’d be of
use to her and that I could serve in your place. She didn’t seem to have a
problem with making a deal. Besides, she said I’d have to change or be killed.”

He shook his head, weakly paced back and forth. “I can’t
believe this.” Seeing Gavin crawl out of his skin was an image I wasn’t used
to. “She doesn’t bargain, doesn’t negotiate. Everything she does is for
herself, do you understand that? She doesn’t compromise, she doesn’t play fair.
She
deceives
. We have to get you out of here.
Now
.”

“Gavin, I can’t leave you here. This whole plan you had to
come here and save the vampire world is insane. This won’t bring your parents
back, it’s too big for you. I came here to catch you in time, to beg you to
forget this whole thing and just leave. I might not be able to talk you out of
it, I know—I understand what coming here means to you. But if you’re going to
go through with it, you have to let me be here with you, you have to let me
help. If I let her change me, you’ll be freed from your curse right away. The
more time you spend serving her, the more time she has to become suspicious of
your intentions, or she could just decide to kill you. Your life is in danger,
you can’t waste any time. I can be here and wait for you until you do whatever
it is you came here to do. This is what I
want
.”

I didn’t think it possible, but the torment on his face
deepened. “I knew what I was doing,” he said. “She agreed to let me serve
inside Amaranth, just like I wanted her to. My curse would be lifted after I
helped lead her people, and then everything would be in place for my plan to
work! She won’t hurt me, not yet. But now? Now, you walked right into her trap,
you gave her exactly what she wants. She won’t change you, she’ll keep you
until I give her what she wants, and then she’ll kill you!”

“How do you know that?” I stepped in front of him and stopped
him from pacing.

“I just know.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“I know,” he jerked his thumb to his chest, “because that’s
what she did to my parents. Bargained with what they loved most: with me. She
kept me alive until they did what she wanted, and the minute they did, she
tried to get rid of me. I escaped, so she got rid of them instead. She
will
kill you.”

My heart sank. Of course he knew better than I did what she
was capable of. If I’d only trusted him in the first place, let him do what he
came here to do. But he left me regenerate, and I was indebted to him. My
efforts might have been in vain, but my motives convicted my heart.

“Please, let me do this,” I said. “Go into exile and let her
take me, or get out of here, it’s your choice. But I’m here now, and I’m either
going back home with you, or I’m going to be here to watch you bring her
kingdom down. So whatever you do, do
not
ask me
to cower away and let you walk into a suicide mission.”

“I’m not asking. You’re leaving. You’re powerless here,
changed or not, do you get that?”

“I’m
not
leaving. Not unless
you come with me.”

He turned from me and looked out the cell window toward the
moon, at the eerie shadow that unhurriedly began casting itself across it.

“That shadow wasn’t there when I got here,” I mumbled, eyed
it nervously.

“It’s not the earth’s moon. It’s … like an hourglass. It
tells the
Amaranthians
when the crescent cycle is
almost over. The portal will close soon, we have to go.” He turned back to me.
“You leave me no choice, I’ll leave with you, we’ll have to escape. There’s no
way you’ll make it out alive on your own. But this isn’t over, I have to come
back. I’ll have to go into hiding, regroup.…”

I rushed forward to hug him. “Run with me. You don’t have to
come back. It doesn’t matter what you are, we can start over.”

“This was never supposed to happen, Camille.” He gently held
me in his arms, lowered his voice. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be with
you. Not until I’m freed from this. I
need
to do
this. Not just for myself, but for my parents. I owe it to them, please try to
understand.”

“There
has
to be another
way.”

“There isn’t. This is my fate and you can’t alter it. I’ll
leave with you to keep you safe, but you can’t keep me from this. I need you to
understand.”

He brushed his fingers through my hair and kissed my
forehead, brought me home again. “What possessed you to do this, love?” He
spoke calmer now, held me tighter. “I’ve missed you so much, you have no idea.
I’ll never forgive Joel for letting you escape.”

“It wasn’t Joel’s fault. I tricked him.”

“What has gotten
in
-to you?”

“I just know what I have to do now.”

“And what is that exactly?”

“To stop fighting against the current. There’s no going back
for me. Unless it’s with you.”

Taking my face in his hands, he scooped me up and kissed me
fiercely, picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist, then trapped me
against the chilly stone wall, radiating with intense need. “God, you smell
good,” he breathed, his mouth moving over my neck and chest, his hand over the
curves of my body. His frenzy consumed me and I gave in, rolling my fingers
through his hair and around the back of his neck, more than happy to surrender.
Keys faintly jingling in the corridor interrupted us.

“Damn it.” He tried to pull his mouth from mine but gripped
my thighs tighter, his body’s heat compelling me to pull him closer. He glanced
at the cell door to find the guard’s whereabouts.

 
“Where did
that
come from?” I exhaled, winded. Allowing him to
loosen his grip on me, I slid down the wall to try to stand, weak in the knees.
“Not that I’m complaining, but … you just can’t
do
things like that,” I panted, fanning myself.