Bozena and Sveta (Neuripra) (4 page)

We've been here before. She knows I won't stop until she screams. Her pride won't let her scream until she's on the cusp of death.

This doesn't hurt me Ellindt. Don't force me to hurt you, just succumb.

No!

She leaves me no choice. Releasing the illusion into her bloodstream with my bite, I know she now feels as if every involuntary sip from my neck is like swallowing a mouthful of flame.

When she looks at me she sees a phoenix in full pyre mode.

Consumed with a blaze inside and out, her clamped mouth releases a long wail of torture to hum against my artery. Her body is charred and withering... the agony all consuming while incineration destroys everything that keeps her whole.

But it's an illusion. Only demons and angels understand this power, and only we wield it.

It won't be long now and she'll beg to be pardoned for her crimes so the purification ends.

It's who she is
after
the fire that I look forward to.

Chapter 6

Sveta
:

I stand when Zauran stops. Moving around the Gray Ghost I lift it off its side, waiting for Zauran to get out and help me hoist it onto the back of the pick up truck.

“
Are you okay?” he says, leaving the driver's door open and swaggering to block the tailgate.

“
Yup.”

“
Wanna tell me what the hell happened?” he gestures at my torn leathers that look like I humped a cheese grater.

“
Can we get the bike off the road first? The longer we stand here the greater the odds of having someone stop and ask questions.” It's a priority over explaining my predicament.

He scowls at me, alpha flaring in his eyes and misting briefly to aqua the night.

It's almost morning and I'm so fucking annoyed I haven't had a chance to contact Zena tonight. My temper is itching for a confrontation.

We wrestle the Ghost onto the back of his vehicle in silence and I wait for him to slam the back shut, before jumping down and facing him.

There's three feet between us and so much that needs to be said it may as well be a canyon.

My older brother raises his black eyebrows, hiding them behind wild hair. It's a silent question, one he won't ask again.

“Tell me what happened when you went missing,” I say, instead of revisiting my face meeting Venix's foot at 160 mph.

He takes a step back, the shock registering in his expression.

“What did he say?” he says, so low it's a threat.

“
Fuck what he said Zauran. I want to hear it from you.”

I don't trust that vampyre cocksucker, angel or not.

It's deeply dark and cold in this envelope before sunrise. He rubs his face, staring across the road to the vast emptiness of Ada Huja. “I don't know if it was him. It was someone I know though, but they disguised their voices. Two motherfuckers the size of mountains jumped me in the garage. They smashed my head in with a metal pipe. I woke up in a cave, chained to the floor.”

“
Why didn't you tell me?” I ask quietly, disappointment thickening my voice.

He squares his shoulders, lowering his head to glare black opal eyes at me, “What for? There's nothing to say.”

“You could have said something when Venix returned you. We were all there. Instead you arrived and in seconds the shit started hitting the fan with Darise shooting at everyone.”

He raises his arms up on either side in a helpless gesture, “What the hell do you want me to tell you, Sveta? That I had my ass handed to me in bloody rags? I don't know who attacked me, so discussing this is pointless.”

“Why? Why would someone attack you Zauran?”

“
Because I broke spiritual law. We're always watched even when we think we're not. I had every bone in my body broken and ground up, I was spitting blood for days. It's not exactly something I want to chat about.” He gestures to the truck, “Look, can we get out of here?”

“
No.” I step back, expecting him to get volatile. “Was Jowendrhan with you?”

“
What? When I was attacked and kidnapped?”

I nod, waiting for the truth.

“Yes.” His jaw clenches so tight it looks painful.

“
Why?” I ask, disbelief churning my stomach.

“
Because he made Božena pregnant without her prior knowledge or consent.”

He folds his arms, resigning himself to the interrogation with obvious resistance.

Fuck, so Venix told me the truth.

Mulling it over, I take a few seconds to meet Zauran's gaze. “That's what Venix said. He told me you and Jo were punished for doing wrong.”

“What of it, Sveta? Why the hell are we even having this discussion?”

“
He also said he kept you captive for two days to deliver more pain to you both. Is that true?”

“
Why the fuck would he tell you? Is this how he divides and conquers? What does he hope to gain by telling my brother what he did when I was chained up with Jowendrhan? Is he trying to get inside your head and make you think I can't protect Belgrade?”

“
Is it true?”

“
Yes,” he snarls.

He turns and punches the metal tailgate, gonging it loudly to peal out into the open drifts beyond the tarmac.

Now I answer the question, “He gets his kicks out of proving he's mighty. Except with Venix he gives you no warning and plays dirty. He just appeared in the middle of the highway. I reacted instinctively, slamming on anchors, and the bike lost traction. I went sailing into his waiting foot. Venix is a bastard, Zauran. He's an evil prick who gets his rocks off hitting on our girls and breaking our balls without announcing his intentions. He has no fucking honor!” I say, anger helping my voice to rise.

If I was itching for a fight before, now it's an addiction needing a fix.

“Why did he tell you?” Zauran demands, every vein on his body pumping out in rage as he morphs into true neuri form.

“
He wanted me to leave his precious prodigy alone. For some reason he thinks Jowendrhan can do no wrong. But in light of Venix kicking my ass, and yours, I would say he has an agenda. He stood in the middle of this fucking highway,” I yell, pointing down the white line into Novi Beograd. “...I went sailing into an incoming foot to the face at an ungodly speed. He sent me backflipping over the bike, dislocating my stuck leg and breaking it. Then while I was man down he stood here bursting out angel light and antagonizing me into doing the same. If he was truly an angel...” I say, adding finger inverted brackets. “...Then he would be protecting the supernatural community, not risking exposure out in the open. Add his behavior to the savage attacks around Pravus and I would say Venix is the rogue leader who is trying to get this land back under his control. He's making us look bad while framing us for murder!”

“
What about Ellindt? She's Jowendrhan's sister, the twin to Jo's dead brother Seithe,
and
she owned Pravus first. This could be payback for her brother dying. She has just as many reasons to be killing innocents and framing us as Venix does. She's already a fucking red eyed murderer. If anyone could lead them, she would be the prime candidate,” he shouts back.

“
We didn't kill Seithe! Darise did. It's not our fault Zaria ran to you and left Darise for dust. And as I recall, at that time Darise was too busy sucking on Zena's face to notice that he was driving Zaria away. It's because Ellindt is the obvious choice that I don't think it's her. I think what happened with Jowendrhan tonight exposed Venix for who and what he is. And he's not an angel!”

Zauran's veins and extruded muscles deflate, and his voice drops to a deadly whisper. “Are you saying Venix is vampyre again?”

“It makes sense. It also explains why he's here and not in the heaven he claims he can go to anytime he pleases. It also explains why he's raising Jowendrhan's vampyre twins. How come all is quiet and peaceful until Venix magically reappears?”

I step closer to Zauran, reverting to telepathy,
Why is Venix fathering those twins? They're Jowendrhan's children, not his. If they get rid of us they have free access to the slakax women. Božena, Phoebe, and Zaria, are half slakax. They're proof there are more of them hiding in Belgrade. This entire war isn't about us Zauran, it's a fight for the right to own the only light left to redeem humanity from evil.

He gives me an exasperated stare,
so I continue,
Look what they did to Phoebe and Zaria, they made them so paranoid those girls were living in fear of constant attack. If they do that to Zena, god help them Zauran because I will go on a murdering spree. That kind of fear would destroy the little that's left of her. Jowendrhan nearly took her final breath with his surprise pregnancy. She's suffered enough.

“I hear you, and that's why we're gathering intel. I don't need you going all vigilante on them until we have the facts.”

I nod, that's fair. “You're my alpha, but you're also my brother. I'm giving you my perspective because you won't ask for it. I see things you don't. And the next time Venix appears in the middle of a highway I'm going to accelerate, not brake.”

“What are you going to do now?” says Zauran, gesturing to my bike.

“
It's scrap metal. You know where I live, I can only get home by bike. I need to borrow one of yours, if you don't mind. Then I'm going to see Božena.”

“
She's sleeping now, Sveta. Don't allow worry to turn you into a total dickhead.”

“
She's not sleeping. I know her better than anyone, Zauran. I nursed her back to health. I helped to keep her alive. I was there when she was in a darkness so absolute her mind revisited her life. She's in constant emotional pain and if she doesn't hear from me she falls right back into that pit.”

“
What pit?”

I glare at my brother, “None of your fucking business.”

*

Zarak
:

She's in a comatose state of sedation and I take the window of opportunity to report to Zauran.

Reappearing in the abyss of the back passage, I stalk the corridors to his office.

Only Akae is here.

“
Where is he?” I ask my brother.

“
Venix attacked Sveta, after Sveta attacked Jowendrhan. This entire hierarchy is falling to ruin. Why? What did you discover?” says Akae.

“
I'm keeping her at my place for a day or two. The only way to truly know if she's behind the attacks is to keep her out of their reach. Without a leader to give them orders, the attacks will stop. Then we'll know Ellindt is the reason for the uprising. If there are no attacks, it's her. If they continue, then it's someone framing her.”

“
Zauran says Sveta thinks it's Venix.”

That strips my bones of calcite and I sit down in the chair opposite Akae's. “What?”

“He has a point, Zarak. Venix comes back and the minions go berserk. What are the odds?”

“
He doesn't have time to play war, he's raising twins on his own. Vampyre twins are impossible to watch and keep under control. There's no way it's Venix,” I say.

Akae give me the razor smile that spells doom, “That's your opinion. Good luck with it.”

“Are you telling me I just put Ellindt through hell, for nothing?”

“
You love putting her through hoops of fire, so shut the fuck up and quit complaining.”

Standing again, I look at him. We're a mirror image of each other, deliberately. It's a disguise we both choose to wear. Black hair, black eyes, no pupils, built like dragons... I'm annoyed he'd insult me like that. If anyone knows the truth, it's Akae.

He stands, confronting me, reading my thoughts as clearly as if I'd spoken them out loud. His eyes flicker into spotlights. “Go back to her. I'll call you if we need you.”

I nod, only too happy to comply.

Reappearing in the crypt, I check on her first.

I wish to god she hadn't caused murder. The red in her irises is blood guilt and a dead giveaway for being the direct cause of human death. Before that she was just another vampyre, a fallen angel looking for redemption.

She still looks like an angel to me. Her hair is long enough to sit on. Thick, voluminous, so pale it looks like moonbeams catching starlight, and wavy to soften her features and give her a comforting air.

Her eyes are so blue they make Arctic icebergs look insipid, and her lips are naturally the color of pomegranate pulp. They part when she inhales and her black eyelashes part to stare bottomless eyes at me.

There she is, the angel I keep rescuing.

Her smile is demure and she moves to caress a palm down my face, pressing it against my jaw, calling to me like a siren in a fog.

I healed her before I left. I'm many things, but monster isn't one of them. The reputation suits me and I use it to my advantage, but it's a far cry from the truth.

Floating in my bed, she lifts up, moving to sit in my lap, soft lips tracing my face and breathing innocuous temptation across my mouth.

The hate is gone. The fear destroyed. Her true nature is back, in my face front and center, and it's only in this tiny window that I get my old lover back. She only loves me for a little while and then the blood guilt starts to flood her body again, turning her from everything good, turning her away from anyone who loves her unconditionally.

I will always be that creature. I'm bound to her forever and it's a living hell watching her want anyone and everyone, but me.

I loathe the vampyre who watches her back, always there to prevent me from clearing her mind of sludge and filth, preventing me from kissing and holding her heart to heart, soul to soul.

Arelstin is the darkest vampyre I've met, and yet she trusts him with her life. I truly wish I knew what hold he has over her, because I'm damn powerful and I can't break the chain-mail he has wrapped over her inner light.