Claiming the Vampire (18 page)

Mary shook her head. “I don’t know what your own legends tell you, but the Dark Fae believe that thousands of years ago, when a group of Fae rebels found their way to Earth, the first thing they did was to create magical protections to ensure that they couldn’t be pulled back here. Those magics still hold, still protect the Earth Fae from crossing through against their will, or by accident.”

“I never heard that,” Jessica said slowly. “But our legends agree that we came to Earth from this realm, and that we brought absinthe with us as our only link to the place of our origin. Only a few weeks ago, one of our spell casters found out something else about absinthe. That drinking it weakens the veil between our dimensions. And she learned that the Dark Fae were going to use that to their advantage, during this coming winter solstice when Fae around the world will be drinking absinthe. That’s when the invasion was to take place.”

“Yes. Navril was going to pen the humans like cattle—those she didn’t slaughter. Because they can’t survive the journey here, she was going to send Fae there, to conceive. To rape,” she clarified deliberately. “Then they would come back here to bear their children.”

Jessica breathed in sharply. If Mary thought she didn’t know how violent and ruthless Navril’s plan had been, she was right.

“Why did you do it?” Mary asked softly. “Why did you make a truce with these people? Why didn’t you fight them, instead?” Her hands were clenched into fists, as if she were ready to go to battle herself.

“Why didn’t you fight them?” Jessica countered.

“Because I’m only one against many. You don’t have that problem.”

“But we do. Or at least, that’s what my mother and the other council leaders decided. If we went to war with the Dark Fae, we would lose. They control the portals, which means they can invade our world, but we can’t invade theirs. And they can send an army of demons against us—and against the humans we’re sworn to protect. Going to war would mean not only countless Fae deaths, but countless human deaths, too.” She took a breath. “And my mother didn’t believe the Dark Fae are irredeemable. She thought they could be reasoned with. And what about Kel? You said he was kind to you. That he saved your life. Doesn’t that prove that the Dark Fae aren’t simply evil?”

Mary’s hands were still clenched. “You don’t know anything about them. Kel is…” she swallowed. “Kel is different. Maybe he’s a throwback to those Fae who found their way to Earth so long ago. He tells me there are others like him, others who want a different way of life, and maybe there are. But most of them—the queen, and Kel’s brother, and all the Fae here in the fortress—they’re more cruel than you can imagine. If you saw the fighting in the pits…” Her lower lip trembled, and she pressed her mouth into a thin line to stop it.

“Tell me about it,” Jessica said after a moment.

“The Dark Fae enjoy blood sports of all kinds. And the pit games have always been a favorite entertainment. The fighters are the vampires and shifters from earth, and the prisoners from this realm, too. Fae criminals or traitors or rebels, and members of the demon races who live here. They fight each other to the death for a crowd of spectators.”

Jessica drew in a sharp breath. “And if they refuse?”

Mary looked at her. “They may be thrown to the more feral of the demon races, as food. Or they may be tortured more…creatively. All in front of the crowds, of course. Not that that happens often. Usually, they choose to fight.”

Jessica felt sick. She remembered what Hawk had told her about Hector, and what Mary had endured at his hands. “And you—you were part of that?”

“The Fae enjoy watching vampires fight in the pit. They’ll pay a high price in gemstones to anyone from Earth who will deliver a vampire to them. That’s what happened to me.”

“The blood trafficker who captured you.”

Mary nodded. “A month after I came here, the fighting master decided I’d had enough training, and I was assigned my first fight. It was against a Fae demon, and I won by sheer luck. He stumbled, and impaled himself on the axe I’d been given as a weapon.”

Her eyes grew far away. “That night, Kel visited me in my cell. He told me who he was. He said that when he became king, he would put an end to the pit fighting and the taking of Earth prisoners. He also said that might not happen for a hundred years, as his mother could easily live that much longer. He said he was working to persuade her and all the Fae to his way of thinking, but that very few were willing to listen to him. And he—he said that he had spoken with the fighting master, and that I was no longer a prisoner. I was to work under the warden as a guard. He said it was the best he could do for me, or risk Navril’s wrath and the end of all his efforts.”

She stopped, and something in her expression told Jessica that if she had had a beating heart, a blush would be staining her cheeks right now.

“What else did he say?” she asked gently.

Mary shook her head. “Nothing of importance. Over the years, Kel has tried to be a friend to me. I must admit I have often repaid his kindness with bitterness, but he—he never turned on me. A few years ago he came to me in the middle of the night, to say that he had finally found one of his mother’s portals to Earth, and that he wanted to try to get me out. To get me back home.”

“But the attempt failed?”

Mary shook her head again. “I refused to go with him. With Hawk dead—as I thought—I had no one to return to. And as much as the prisoners here resent me, their lives would be worse if I wasn’t here. And at Kel’s direction, the warden has given me the power to save some of them, as I have been saved. Every year I can choose a few Earth prisoners to be made into servants, or guards, as I have been. And I can persuade the warden to free a few of the Fae prisoners to return to their homes—not those who are believed to be traitors to the queen, but those who were taken in minor crimes. So I told Kel I was staying.”

Again a pause, and that look in Mary’s eyes. And Jessica knew in a burst of insight that there was another reason Mary had chosen to stay here, even though her existence here was so bitter.

She was in love with Kel. She might never acknowledge it to herself or to him, but she was.

Jessica took a deep breath. “Now that you know Hawk is alive, what will you do? Will you stay, or come back to Earth with me?”

She saw the sudden uncertainty in Mary’s eyes. Between her love for her brother, her love for Kel, and her duty to the prisoners, how was she to choose a course of action?

But there was no chance for Mary to decide. Jessica heard nothing, but Mary’s head lifted suddenly, like a wolf scenting the wind.

“Someone’s coming.” Her eyes flashed to Jessica. “Does anyone but Kel know you’re in this world?”

Jessica shook her head.

“Then you have to go now. There’s nowhere to hide in here.” She seized Jessica’s arm and swept her to the doorway. “You must have come from Kel’s chamber. You’ve got to back that way.”

“But how will you—”

“Now!” Mary snapped, practically shoving her from the room. And now Jessica could hear the sound of footsteps coming from the other end of the corridor, where the doors to the prisoners’ cells were.

She turned back once to give Mary’s shoulder a squeeze, and then she slipped back along the passage, around the corner to the place she had hidden before. She meant only to pause there a second, to make sure there was no threat to Mary from whomever was coming, but the first word out of the visitor’s mouth made her stay.

“Mary!”

It was Kel, his voice sharp with relief.

“Kel! Why did you come that way? Why not from your own chamber?”

“The door had been locked from the inside. I panicked, and came down through the ordinary entrance.” There was a pause. “I didn’t know who had done it, but I was afraid it might be Edrik. Has he—or anyone—been down here?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Mary’s voice was cool. “I just had the pleasure of meeting your fiancé. She’s probably back in your chamber by now. You should go after her.”

“Jessica was here?” He sounded stunned. “I thought she’d gone back to her own world.”

“No.”

“What was she doing here?”

“Looking for me,” she said, her voice sounding defiant. “My brother is still alive, and she knows him. She offered to take me back to Earth with her.” There was a short silence, and then, as though the words were forced from her, she went on. “She’s lovely, Kel. Lovely through and through. I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

Another silence. When Kel spoke again, his voice was tortured.

“You know I’ll never feel for her the way I feel for you.”

“Don’t touch me!”

A note of pain deepened his voice. “You won’t let me touch you. You won’t let me tell you how I feel. Sometimes I believe you really do hate me—and yet I can’t stop loving you. I’ll never stop. No matter what you say to me, I’ll never—”

“Kel.” Mary’s voice sounded strained, as though she were struggling with a great weight. “You know you can’t say these things to me. Nothing will ever happen between us, and Jessica deserves better than this. She deserves—”

“I deserve a man who loves me.”

Jessica left her hiding place, and came striding around the corner and into the light.

The prince and the vampire were locked in a tableau like something out of a fairy tale. Kel was kneeling at Mary’s feet, his head bowed and his hands gripping the material of her tunic. Mary was looking down at his blond head with anguish in every line of her face. Her hands were curled into fists, as though she longed to touch him.

At the sound of Jessica’s voice, Kel sprang to his feet and Mary gasped. They both stared at her, frozen.

“I deserve a man who loves me,” Jessica said again, looking at them calmly. “Kel, I’m afraid I can’t marry you after all. I was willing to marry without love when I thought neither of us was capable of that emotion, but as it is…” she took a deep breath. “No. We’ll have to find another way to keep peace between our realms.”

“What a lovely thought,” came a new voice. “But somehow, I don’t think my mother’s going to leave that up to you.”

Jessica’s head jerked up to see a richly dressed Fae man standing a few yards away, with three well-armed guards behind him.

She’d recognized the voice as belonging to Kel’s brother. Edrik. He looked like Kel, but his expression had none of Kel’s impassivity. Emotion was making the muscles in his face twitch.

After only a moment, she realized what that emotion was.

Hatred.

Chapter Eleven

Jessica’s first introduction to Queen Navril took place with her hands tied and a guard with a sword standing behind her.

Her hands were tied because she’d fought, even though Kel had called out to her to surrender. But that wasn’t a word she felt like adding to her vocabulary. When the guards had approached her she’d struck out with feet and fists. She’d been reaching for the knife in her ankle sheath when Edrik himself slammed a knee into her abdomen, which had slowed her down enough that the guards had been able to restrain her.

The cords they’d used to tie her wrists behind her back were tight. As she and Mary and Kel were marched down the corridor past the prisoners’ cells—Jessica tried to see inside, but the barred openings in the door were small and the guards kept them moving—she tried without success to work her hands to loosen the bonds.

When she and Kel were jostled together as they were forced up a spiral staircase, he whispered to her, “Even if you get your hands free, you can’t use the portal stone down here. The dungeons are warded against them. You’ll have to wait until you’re upstairs.”

He was separated from her before she could tell him that she had no intention of using the stone and leaving him and Mary behind in danger. Did he really think so little of her?

Not that it was likely to be an issue any time soon, she thought wryly, feeling the cords cutting into the skin of her wrists.

At the top of the staircase they emerged into what looked like a high-ceilinged corridor. When she felt the cold wind against her cheek, she realized it was actually a covered bridge. The arches between the stone columns were open to the mountain air. Jessica breathed it in gratefully after the fetid odor of the dungeons.

Then she glanced through one of the archways, over the side, and her heart seized in a quick spasm. The bridge spanned the gap between one mountain crag to another, over a drop into the jagged rocks far below.

“Other prisoners have sought that way out,” a voice whispered in her ear, and she turned her head to see Edrik staring at her. He was smiling at her with those strange, hate-filled eyes, and the sight was more chilling than the view from the bridge. He leaned closer to her as they walked. “But I don’t think your death will be so easy.”

“Don’t speak to her,” Kel said, his voice like ice.

Edrik turned his gaze on his brother. Kel had not been restrained, and the guards didn’t point their weapons directly at him, but it was clear that he wasn’t walking free.

“Concerned for your bride-to-be? What does your vampire whore think of that?”

Something flashed into Kel’s eyes that was almost as ugly as the look in his brother’s, but before he could respond, their party came to a halt before an immense wooden door, guarded by two Fae wearing crimson and silver.

There was a murmured discussion between one of them and one of Edrik’s men. Then the bar was drawn back from the doors and they opened, slowly, into a hall of incredible magnificence.

Jessica’s eyes were dazzled by the jeweled mosaics on the walls and by the sunlight that shone into the hall through the enormous windows, casting prisms of light when they struck the gemstones. Because of this, it took her a minute to see the people at the far end of the room.

Once she spotted them, though, it was impossible to look anywhere else.

Queen Navril sat at the head of a marble table with about two dozen other Fae, both men and women.

The wooden doors closed behind them, and their small group stood in silence as the queen regarded them. After a moment she stood, which of course brought everyone else at the table hastily to their feet.