Broken Heart 02 Don't Talk Back to Your Vampire (22 page)

Yet Ruadan was a restless soul and he wished to resume his travels. The night before Ruadan's
parting, a great celebration was held. Dancing, drinking, and feasting went on through the night.

In the wee hours, as everyone fell into drunken sleep, the village was savagely attacked.

Though Ruadan and Koschei combined their powers to fight the unknown invaders, nearly all of
the villagers were slain and the buildings burned. Koschei tried to Turn his sons, his daughters, his
favorite wives, but it seemed none could survive the change.

"Help me," begged Koschei. "Save my children. Save my beloved wives."

But even Ruadan's attempts at Turning them failed. All of Koschei's wives died. One son and two
daughters barely lived; Ruadan and Koschei escaped with them deep into the mountains. Koschei
led them to a cave where he often stayed when hunting and they made the mortal survivors
comfortable.

Koschei's son had seen only ten winters. His daughter Ina was barely seventeen. Tritsu was nearly
twenty, already married with daughters of her own.

All but these five souls perished that terrible night.

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Koschei's grief could not be contained. He begged Ruadan to turn his children into
deamhan fola.

"Would you curse your son? He is but a boy. If you Turn him now, he will grow into manhood
only in mind," said Ruadan.

Tritsu pleaded to die. She couldn't bear the thought of living without her children and her
husband. Koschei held her hand and wept. "You will join your loved ones. This I promise, my
daughter."

As Koschei held death vigils over his son and his elder daughter, Ruadan tended the pretty Ina.

As the dawn crept over the mountains, two mortals passed into the next realm and three survivors
sought rest in the dank darkness of the cave.

The next evening, Koschei continued his vigil over the ailing Ina while Ruadan returned to the
village. He buried the dead and burned everything else to the ground. He bespelled the area so
that neither human nor beast would enter what had once been a happy place.

After the work was done and the spells cast, Ruadan returned to the cave.

Koschei was readying to leave. He knew of a powerful healer in another village. "I will take Ina
to her and pray that my daughter lives."

That evening, Ruadan and Koschei parted ways.

Another
deamhan fola
walked the earth
.

Koschei the Second.

Koschei the Deathless.

I awoke outside the mansion. I was dressed in pajamas and bunny slippers, shuffling along the driveway like a zombie.

It was pitch-black. Storm clouds scudded across the moon, blanking out even the stars. The night was eerily quiet. I thought of that scene from Dean Koontz's
Watchers
when a man alone in the woods is attacked by a vicious, unknown animal. It felt like that kind of hush, right before the creature emerged, menacing and snarling.

I turned toward the house. I had no idea how I'd gotten out. Or what I was doing trying to escape. I just wanted to get inside. If I could get inside, I would be safe.

I heard the soft growls and the patter of feet behind me. Within seconds, my arms were imprisoned by large, furry hands.

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"Let me go!"

The vamp/lycans snarled and whirled around, dragging me down the driveway.

Stop! Now!

They stopped.

Fear knotted my throat and my stomach churned. Was Patrick right? Were my powers stronger than I had believed?

Let me go.

They dropped me. I landed on hands and knees. Shaking badly, I scrambled to my feet and turned to look at them. They returned my stare, but didn't move toward me.

Who are you?

We are no one.

"Eva!" Jessica, Patrick, Damian, and several others ran down the drive. Jessica held her swords at the ready. My world was spinning. I tried to stay upright, but I fell to my knees.

What do you want?

We want nothing.

Even though I felt like retching, I pushed into their minds and found them… empty. Someone had scooped out their memories, their thoughts, and their wills. And whoever had done that had also implanted these answers.

Where is your master?

We have no master.

Patrick and Jessica kneeled beside me and helped me to stand. "They're just… shells."

Damian and his security team surrounded the creatures, pointing guns and swords at them. They growled louder, their feet scraping impatiently at the concrete. I heard their thoughts:
Kill anyone who gets in
your way
.

Simultaneously, they whirled, arms extended and claws slashing.

"Stop!" I yelled and thunder reverberated in my voice. The lycans ceased their attack. I felt every pair of eyes on me.

"Eva?" Damian's voice was low, questioning.

I wanted to weep. "Their minds are gone. You must do—" I felt my throat close and I cleared it roughly.

"You must do the kindest thing."

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He nodded. The guns rattled efficiently and the vamp/lycans fell to the driveway, blood trickling from their wounds to stain the concrete.

"Where's Lorcan?" I asked, my voice raw.

"I am here," he whispered. He appeared behind me and swept me into his arms. I felt a tingling, then
POP
! we were in my bedroom. He tucked me under the covers, then sat next to me, brushing my hair with his long fingers.

"What did they want with me?"

Lorcan shook his head. "I do not know." His gaze blazed with fury. "But I will find out."

A few days passed and I heard nothing more. Either no one knew why I had been kidnapped a second time or they were all trying to protect me.

I'm not sure when I realized that I was dying. Maybe no one wanted to admit it. Everyone had hope. I knew from the number of visitations and the number of blood vials Stan syringed that he was working nonstop on a cure. Jessica and Patrick came every day and talked to me like I would return to my library and to my life with Tamara. I pretended that I believed everything would be all right, but after two weeks my body was so achy, so weary, and my mind so filled with fluttering, gray thoughts, I couldn't believe that I would survive.

I supposed that I had gone through all five stages of grief, but honestly, I hadn't paid attention. Did exhaustion in mind, body, and soul equal acceptance of death? I didn't know. I was scared. In those few hours that I spent alone with no one to talk to and nothing to occupy me, terror filled me until I almost choked. I got out of my bed and walked the room, but doing so just made me more tired and more anxious. If I thought about it too long, I got really weirded out by the idea I was being kept a prisoner by my friends. I didn't know what the taint would do to me, but I knew it would be bad. Really bad.

I decided that I had to plan for my death, even as I continued to embrace the faint hope of a cure. The Consortium would take care of Tamara financially, but she needed a parent. I knew Jessica would take Tamara as her own if I asked, but she already had Bryan, Jenny, and Rich Junior. He was just a toddler, and the son of Jess's husband and his mistress, both of whom were dead. Besides, I couldn't ignore the fact that with me gone, Tamara would have a chance to return to the real world and be, at least for her, a normal kid.

After Lorcan and Bert left for the evening, I used the house phone to buzz Jessica. Using it reminded me that I had never gotten my backpack or my cell phone. I wondered if Lor had found it or if he'd forgotten to even look for it. Oh, well. What did it matter now?

"Hey there!" Jessica said, her smile and her words
way
too cheery. "How are you feeling?"

"Like somebody hit me with a truck, backed over me, then did an Irish jig on me with spiked cleats."

Chuckling, she sat on the bed and held my hand. "What do you need? More pillows? More satellite channels? A bigger TV?"

"Five pillows are plenty and so are a thousand and three channels." I glanced at the flat-screen TV that
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took up nearly the whole wall in front of my bed. "I don't think you can get a bigger one in here."

"Point taken." She patted my hand and looked at me, a half smile on her lips. How many times had I sat on my mother's hospital bed doing the very same thing? I had felt helpless and afraid, though I never wanted Mom to know.

"In the library safe is a manila envelope. I need you to bring it to me, Jess, but please don't tell anyone else, okay?"

"Secret mommy stuff. Gotcha. Anything else?"

I nodded toward the mobile phone on the bedside table. "Can I call long distance on that?"

"You bet." Jessica stood up. "You want to let me in on what you're doing?"

"When the time is right." I smiled to deflect my reluctance to confide in her. "Ever figured out what the smell is up on the third floor?"

"Nope. I can't get anyone to go up there and check it out. The stench is worse than Bryan's room."

I laughed. "Now, that's
bad
."

When I awoke the following evening, I was greeted by the sight of Brigid bent over me. She smiled benevolently as she passed her hands above my body, uttering Gaelic in a lyrical voice.

I had seen Brigid in meetings and around Broken Heart. Yet I had never been this close to her. She was tall—at least six feet. Her hair was very long and red and her skin a creamy pale. She looked gorgeous in the simple green dress that adorned her. On her skin swirled gold patterns, as if they were animated tattoos. Jessica told me that Brigid was a true immortal, the mother to Ruadan and the grandmother to Patrick and Lorcan. She was also a healer with powerful
draíocht
, or magic. But she hadn't been able to interfere with the progression of the taint. Not even immortals had all the answers.

As her hands went over me once more, I felt a soothing heat flow from my feet to my head. The magic tingled and for once my weariness gave way to clarity.

"It seems you're preparing for a trip to the Other Side," she said in a lyrical Irish voice. "But maybe you shouldn't be packing your bags quite so soon."

"I'm trying to be realistic," I said.

"Is that your way of saying you're giving up?"

Anger spiked, even though Brigid's tone was kind. "I won't put my head in the sand and pretend that the taint isn't harming me."

Brigid waved at a cushioned chair and it glided across the carpeted floor. She sat down, her green eyes assessing me. "In the days when the Celts were one clan, when their magic hadn't been divided by those who loved the earth and those who loved the sea, I was born to Morrigu."