Blood Redemption (16 page)

The corpses of Damien and Dane Alexiares slowly slumped to the ground, their deceased
mouths still open in shock, their expired knees buckling forward. Before Saber could
react or cry out, Achilles drew his sword from its scabbard, slashed deftly through
the air, and both of the male’s heads toppled forward, decapitated from their bodies.

Saber stood in stunned silence, staring blankly ahead.

W
atch your back, son of Jadon!
Salvatore snarled at Saber, using the house of Jaegar’s private, telepathic bandwidth.
You no longer have a home here
.

And with that, the entire delegation of Dark Ones simply vanished out of view, leaving
the dead in their wake.

Time stood still.

The earth stopped spinning on its axis.

Nothing happened.

Nothing mattered.

Nothing
existed
.

Saber took two uneven steps forward and cocked his head to the side in confusion.
He looked down at his chest and frowned. Why was he still standing? Still breathing?
He stared at his breastbone in bewilderment—where was the gash? Where was the gaping
hole in the place where his heart should have been? He didn’t see it happen. He didn’t
feel
it happen. But Salvatore must have removed his organ too—it was the only explanation
that made sense.

The only way to account for the pain.

He absently scanned the ground, fully expecting to gape at the gruesome sight of his
own blood and guts, intestines strewn beneath his feet, blending morbidly with the
dirt, staining his steel-toed boots. Again, his mind could not connect the dots, make
sense of what had just happened; but the pain—
great Dark Lords of hell
, the agony!—was beyond anything he had experienced in battle before, beyond anything
he had ever imagined.

Surely there was nothing left of him but skin and bones.

He looked up then. Staring blankly forward at the headless bodies of his father and
his brother.

Damien
.

Dane
.

And eight hundred years of memories—six hundred years of brotherly antics—flashed
through his consciousness in an instant.

They weren’t…dead.

They…they…just weren’t.

What happened?

He had to go to them. He had to go home. Dane would go hunting soon. He would feed,
and Damien, Diablo, and Saber would await his return so they could feed, too.

Yes, he had to go back to the lair.

Saber took another tentative step forward, but for some strange reason, his legs didn’t
work like they should have: They began to buckle beneath him.

He opened his mouth to say something, and that’s when he realized he couldn’t breathe.

He hadn’t taken a breath for hours.

He exhaled, three times in a row, failing to inhale in exchange. His vision grew blurry,
and he started to panic.

Air!

Where was the air!

Why couldn’t he draw in
breath
?

As he continued to pant in desperation, his knees gave way, and he pitched into the
dirt. His head fell forward, and he thought he saw his wild hair through his peripheral
vision, framing his face in a hideous, matted halo. His hands dug into the earth,
and he curled his fingers back, releasing his fangs. Clawing…grasping…trying to hold
onto something…so vital.

And then the air came back.

It rushed into his lungs like a cyclone sweeping across the plains, nearly knocking
him off balance, and he gasped. “
Oh Dark Lords
.”

He moaned.

His fangs extended from his gums, and he bit into his lips, tearing at them, trying
to manage the internal pain.

Blinking several times in rapid succession, Saber Alexiares finally threw back his
head and tried to scream, but no sound came out. He simply shouted noiselessly to
the empty skies what should have been a deafening roar of defiance, and his body shook.

His chest heaved.

Over and over…and over.

But no sound would come out.

“Saber, uita-te la mine, fiule.”
L
ook at me, son.
Someone was standing next to him, speaking in Romanian. Why in Romanian?

He shouted again; and this time there was sound!

Balls of fire began to fall from the heavens, plummeting to the earth and consuming
whatever they touched in a blistering wrath of fury.

“Saber!” A strong, powerful hand on his shoulder.

No!
No.
“Don’t touch me!”

The ground shook beneath him, and thunder and lightning eclipsed the sky. It was beautiful.
Dangerous. Glorious.

Not enough.

Not nearly enough.

It would never be enough!

As pain racked his body in violent waves, Saber began to sway back and forth, shouting,
moaning, pounding the ground, praying for the fires of heaven to consume him where
he knelt.

“Son, you have to stop: Your emotion—it’s too strong.”

That voice. It belonged to Napolean Mondragon. But
son
? Saber Alexiares was no one’s son. He had no father…

He had no father.

He—had—no—father.

As a keening wail escaped his lips, renting the air with its ferocity, the soul he
never knew buckled beneath a grief beyond his reckoning.

And then his eyes focused on Damien and Dane, their decapitated bodies, and he prayed
for death. As the world around him rattled and shook with the fury of a thousand dark
angels, he began to grow weak.

Fangs.

Venom.

Something being inserted into his neck.

Ah yes, Napolean Mondragon, the great leader of the house of Jadon was kneeling beside
him, curiously injecting venom into Saber’s neck. But why?

Why didn’t matter.

There was nothing.

Nothing
.

And then, in a few interminable seconds, the world went black.

Vanya Demir knew better than to pull the same stunt twice, to risk using her magic
once more to slip into Saber’s cell undetected, and what she intended to do this time
was far more difficult, way more complex, and wholly deceitful. Not to mention, she
wasn’t even sure if she could pull it off.

She had worked feverishly to create an Illusion Spell, an elaborate hoax that created
a rift in time, so to speak. If all went well, Saber’s guards would see, hear, and
sense everything around them as if it were happening right now, in the present moment,
when, in truth, they would be experiencing a holographic image from the past, an illusion.
Vanya could slip into Saber’s cell and interact with him, undetected, while the sentinels
would swear he was sleeping soundly, through the night.

She shuddered as she thought about the vast array of spells her female predecessors
had conjured—indeed perfected—and the way she was now able to revive it through her
work at the University. The males in the house of Jadon had no idea just how powerful
their ancient female ancestors had truly been: They were completely unaware of the
immense fountain of knowledge that had died with the original women…well, almost died.

Vanya still had access to it.

So did Ciopori.

And when one really thought about it, the Curse still inflicted a great deal of it
on an ongoing basis.

Vanya wrinkled her nose and cringed, at both the thought of the awful Curse and the
idea of what would happen to her if she got caught. The king would surely throttle
her if he knew she was using her magic for personal gain, and that was to say nothing
of what Marquis would do if he found out: He would string her up by the highest tree
and tan her hide with a prickly branch. Never mind how the highly volatile and totally
unpredictable Saber Alexiares was going to react to her entering his cell, once again,
unannounced. Even if everything went exactly as planned, she might be in for the fright
of her life.

Vanya struggled to dismiss the thought before she lost her courage. After all, she
had already weighed the pros and cons: Of course, she knew it was crazy—by all that
was holy, it was stark-raving mad, not to mention utterly foolhardy. But what else
was she to do? Ciopori had relayed the night’s events to her shortly after the warriors
had returned from the Red Canyons, and the very idea of what had happened in that
clearing had made Vanya sick to her stomach.

Made her want to wretch.

The executions of Damien and Dane were a ghastly abomination she could hardly wrap
her mind around, let alone simply dismiss. Despite the fact that they were evil, Dark
Ones without souls, Saber Alexiares had cared deeply for them, perhaps even worshipped
them, and his sense of betrayal had to be immense.

And the way Ciopori had described his grief?

Great Serpens
, even for one as dark as he, it had to be horrific. Irreconcilable. For all his faults—and
wasn’t that word completely insufficient in light of his sins—he did love his dark
family. At least, in whatever approximation of love he was capable of.

According to Ciopori, Napolean had been forced to sedate him just to stop the fallout
from his anguish: Saber had unwittingly called down fire from the heavens, and he
had been swiftly on his way to causing an earthquake or a tornado. The thought of
that arrogant, rebellious male brought to his knees in torment, broken from the weight
of his sorrow, kneeling upon the ground in raw, unrelenting pain was even more than
she could bear. It was heart wrenching…unimaginable.

Dreadful beyond her imagining.

Yet it was neither Saber nor his pain that drove her to take such a foolish, reckless
chance. Plain and simple, it was her dream.

Always…
and still
…her dream.

All she could think of was the nightmare, the dragon, and the treasure.

Her people.

And what was surely about to be lost forever.

Vanya Demir knew that Saber Alexiares was on the edge of a precipice, and if he fell
this time, he might never return. And for some unknown reason, she also knew that
she was the only soul in the house of Jadon who could truly get through to him, if
it was even possible to get through to a soul as lost as his. In this critical, tortured
moment, she was his only hope for salvation.

Was it dangerous?
Of course
.

It was beyond dangerous—it was stupid.

Would the ones she loved hold her decision against her?
Absolutely
.

In fact, it might be unforgiveable in the king’s eyes. And yet, she could no more
turn away from this challenge…
this duty
…than she could turn away from Nikolai or Ciopori if they needed her. Whatever it
was that drove her to such desperate lengths, the compulsion was greater than her
reservations, the obligation stronger than her common sense.

She drew in a deep breath for courage: This was bigger than a lost vampire and his
destiny
, and she had to see it through.

Staring now at the perfectly constructed Illusion Spell, she watched as Ramsey and
Santos peered naively into the cage and saw a troubled, sedated prisoner asleep on
his cot—a scene reconstructed from twenty-four hours earlier. They were completely
unaware of her presence and totally ignorant of the ruse.

Realizing it was too late to turn back now, she took a cautionary step forward and
fixed her eyes on the real crouching tiger in the corner of the cell, the dark vampire,
estranged from both the house of Jaegar and the house of Jadon, who was alive, awake,
and suffering right before her eyes.

Saber Alexiares was hunched over like a wounded animal. His heavy shoulders were cloaked
by an equally heavy cascade of black-and-red locks that gleamed in the shadowy moonlight
as it shone through the tiny window above him; and his hard, sculpted muscles were
drawn tight and rigid. For all intents and purposes, he looked like a caged feline,
cornered and ready to pounce. He stared absently at the floor; he clawed repetitively
at the ground; and he swayed back and forth like a kite caught in a circular wind.

Frankly, he looked more than a little bit insane.

He looked dangerous.

Vanya approached the vampire slowly, careful to stay out of striking distance. The
dream-image of a fire-breathing dragon suddenly emerged in her mind, and she quickly
shoved the picture aside. “Saber,” she whispered softly. “Dragon, are you in there?”

He raised his head slowly—so
very
slowly. His demeanor was eerily calm…yet not. And then his eyes met hers, and her
breath caught in her throat: His pupils were vacant yet fixed upon hers. His face
was drawn tight yet absent of lines. His expression was empty yet far too aware.

He was a breathing paradox.

Vanya clutched her hand to her heart and whispered a silent prayer to the gods for
protection. “Saber,” she repeated, adding a little strength to her voice.

The top right corner of his lip turned up, and a wicked glint of fangs flashed in
the moonlight. “Princess,” he drawled in a mere hiss of a voice. “You come to me…again.”
His black eyes were so dull and lifeless that it felt like she was staring into the
gaze of a shark.

“I…I…yes.” She cleared her throat for courage. “I heard what happened. And I came
to…to see about you.”

He rose so nimbly, so swiftly, and with such lethal ease that her heart almost stopped
beating.
Oh great Celestial gods
, she was a dead woman. The dragon was going to kill her right then and there—it was
written all over his face: fire, fury, and finality.

She held a steadying hand out in front of her. “Saber…please. Stop, Dragon.”

He licked his bottom lip and growled deep in his throat, the warning of a feral predator.
“What big eyes you have, Red Riding Hood.”

Vanya gulped. “Saber!” She tried to snap him out of it. “This is not a game!”

“Indeed,” he replied. “Death never is.” The meaning of his words echoed loudly in
her mind, ricocheting off her soul, and then he did something completely unexpected:
He took two healthy strides forward, sank back onto his knees, and knelt silently
before her, dropping his head in resignation. He reached up and clutched her hands
in his. “Help me,” he whispered in a voice so faint it was nearly inaudible.

Stunned, Vanya bit her bottom lip. She was too afraid to speak, too afraid to move.
She had no idea what was about to happen next and could only wait, transfixed by the
depth of his emotion.

Seeming to understand, Saber nodded his head in the direction of the watch-room, the
space that housed his guards, and the foreboding chamber that sat just beyond the
outer walls. “I wish to play no more games,” he said softly. “Take me to the chamber
of Sacrifice and Atonement, Vanya. Take me beyond the crossbones and open the hatch.”
His cruel mouth turned up in a smile. “I have had my fill of this incessant torture.”
He laughed insincerely, the sound rough yet hollow. “I get it. Payback is a bitch,
and I had this coming. Still…” His smile turned morose, almost as if he were flashing
back and forth between cynicism and sorrow; and his already harsh grip tightened further
around her slender fingers. “Still…enough is enough. Isn’t this what you, the king,
and all the house of Jadon have been waiting for—what my own treasured house of Jaegar
has been asking the dark lords for since the moment my true origins were revealed?”
Before she could answer, he added, “Just take me to the Death Chamber now, and let
the Blood come for me tonight. For the sake of your gods—and your children—let the
Blood exact its vengeance and be done with it.”

Vanya glanced over her shoulders at the thick, ancient walls made of mud and stone,
following his morbid gaze. Even as she wrestled with the meaning of his words, struggling
to process exactly what he was asking, she knew…and she understood. Saber wanted to
die. He was ready to be taken into the cold, sterile chamber of torture to face his
final reckoning. Good or bad, right or wrong, redeemable or evil; he no longer wanted
to live. She shook her head slowly. “You know I cannot do that, Saber.”

“Why not?” he asked, his voice revealing his angst. “You can put guards to sleep,
create magical rifts in time, slink in and out of this cell like an invisible specter.
Why can’t you take me into that chamber and set me free…in a way your people will
both understand and forgive?”

She didn’t know how to answer him. There were so many reasons, so many things he hadn’t
thought of. “It isn’t time,” she finally said.

He tilted his head to the side and frowned, appearing genuinely confused.

“The Blood,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t come tonight—not even if we wanted it to.”
She clenched her eyes shut and moistened her lips. “It is not yet time, Saber. There
are still twenty-five days left in your Blood Moon.”

Saber laughed unexpectedly, the sound as anguished as it was derisive. He released
her hands, made a triangle with his thumbs and forefingers, and pressed the configuration
against her lower stomach as if framing her womb. “And so, what? You’ve come to give
me the needed sacrifice then?”

Vanya drew in a quick intake of breath. “No!” She pushed his hands away in revulsion
and fought not to squirm. Realizing that a defensive reaction was not going to help
the situation —if anything, it would probably make it worse—she purposefully softened
her voice and tried for a gentler tone. “No, that is
not
why I’ve come. I’ve come to…I’ve come to…”
Oh he
avens
, why had she come?

Suddenly, she felt incredibly stupid.

And more than a little lost.

Whatever had she thought she could do for him?

He suddenly jerked upright and his back grew stiff, almost as if someone had forced
a rod through his vertebrae. His eyes flashed a deadly crimson red. “Why are you doing
this?” he snarled, clearly escalating.

Vanya shook her head vigorously. “Doing what?”

“This!” he roared, pounding a clenched fist several times against his chest.

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“
This spell
. This vitriol! It doesn’t become you, Princess.” He looked down at his chest and
grimaced, grinding his teeth together as if in terrible agony. “It is something I
would expect from someone in the house of
Jaegar
.”

Vanya blanched, her mouth falling open.
What in the world was he talking about?
By the look on his face, one would have sworn she had just thrust a dagger into his
sternum and twisted it 360 degrees just for the pleasure of doing so. Had he gone
utterly mad?

Saber raised his arms and grasped his hair; he clenched his fists into two tight knots
and dropped his head, inadvertently pulling a handful of his mane free. “You’ve done
your worst. You’ve cast your spell. And my heart bleeds.”

It was a statement of such pure vulnerability, Vanya could hardly believe he had uttered
it. “I’ve done no such thing,” she insisted. She stared at his chest, half expecting
to see blood ooze from a wound, and then she took a careful step backward. She was
just about to argue her case when she
felt
the origin of his words. She felt his absolute despair, and she understood the illogical
nature of his reasoning. “Oh…gods…” she mumbled, more to herself than him. Gentling
her voice, she slowly shook her head. “No, Saber. This is not a spell. No one has
cast anything upon you.” She blinked several times as her eyes began to moisten. “The
pain is called grief, and you are experiencing it…
feeling
it
…perhaps for the first time.”

His head snapped up in immediate dissension; his glare was stark with defiance. “No!
It is not!” He sounded furious. “You are a sorceress, a celestial being; you know
the ancient magic; and you are doing this on purpose.” His lips curled back from his
fangs, and the visage was terrifying. “And one way or another, you can make it stop.”