Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) (2 page)

“She is loyal, just like a lioness.”
The thought came too easily into my head, and it was some seconds before I realized it was not mine.

“Why are you following me?” I snapped, thinking I should have asked instead how it was that she had come to know my thoughts. Perhaps it was a thing between Cruxim, although I could not read hers when I tried.

“Yes, it is.” She answered my second question aloud as soon as I had thought it. “You cannot read my thoughts if I do not wish you to. At least not yet.” 

“And yet you would read mine uninvited.”

I felt the wind of her wings as she shrugged in mid-flight. “I imagined you might be less prickly, Amedeo.” Her expression hardly changed; I could not tell if she was hurt or angry.

“I told you—you did not know me.”

They were words to wound, but her serene face betrayed no hint of a frown.

We flew on in silence for some time. Then a voice, softer than the wind in the Cypress pines, entered my head again.
“She is not dead, remember, only sleeping.”

“Sleeping!” I swooped away from her, Beltran’s mocking words ringing in my head:
Think of her as just asleep, Cruxim. A very long, very cold sleep. Such a shame cats just hate water.

“A sorry euphemism. Sleeping on the ocean’s floor,” I spat.

“But living. Still living. Just like you.” With a great flap, she shot forward to face me, and this time her expression was of pity. “Do you know where her anchorstone is? Is it safe?”

I tried to keep any surprise from my features.
She knows of anchorstones. What else does she know?
I wondered.

“Would I be here if I did?” I answered her, above the wind. “But I will find it, and I will wake her. Alone. What can you offer me now that I have lost everything while you stood by and watched it slip away?”

“That, I can’t tell you. Perhaps I can offer you only fate, if that is what draws me to you.”

“Fate!” I spat. “What is fate?”

“
Get out of my head,”
I screamed internally.

She smiled. “You can hear me now, as I hear you. You are a fast learner. Perhaps you should have more faith in fate.”

It was not the time for novelties. The pounding of my wings and muscles had become a dull throb that matched the numbness of my heart and mind. “Enough of fate, and of flight. I need rest. Leave me!”

She fell back a little. “Don’t you want to know who I am?”

“Leave me!” I screamed. “Leave me! I care nothing for fate, or for you, or for life.”

“Skylar,” she said softly.

I thought I detected a brief smile before the sharpness of the wind tugged it away.

“My name is Skylar Emmanuel.”

She spun in the air like a sparrow, rising on a draft before plummeting headfirst down towards the earth, her wings creating a magnificent silver V as she dove.

I
t was not a lie. I was tired of life: tired of taking it. Centuries of sorrow filled me with a longing not for blood or even vengeance, but death—sweet, oblivious darkness. The release from pain. The ecstasy of a void. Yet my head whispered that it was an illusion.

Nothing could erase the memory of Joslyn or Sabine. Not even death.

Death—if only the boy’s blood had killed me, had ended my misery. The effect of it, the heady euphoria, returned momentarily along with another wave of nausea. Why had it not killed me? Was it that I had not taken the boy’s vein in my mouth? If I had drank from him, would that have made the difference?

Perhaps she can tell me that
, I thought,
this strange Cruxim
.
Perhaps she knows.
But the thoughts that followed buzzed angrily in my head.
It is not important. 

What did it matter who this Cruxim was or even
what
she could teach me about my kind? All that would help me was to seek out Sabine’s anchorstone. To rescue her from her greatest fear: eternity in a cage. And to punish those who had put her there.

My thoughts returned to Beltran and to Dr. Gandler, to the evil that lurked in men, in otherworldly beings, and in myself. Beltran and Gandler had been capable of such cruelty, such horror, but my fangs dug deep into my lip as I remembered that I, too, was the bearer of terror to some, even if I had killed with one thought in mind: justice.

Something prickled at the hollow of my throat, and I reached up to find the small silver cross of Danette’s dangling there, attached to a leather thong. A moan escaped into the wind as I remembered the part it had played in Joslyn’s death. Why had she done that? Why? The silver would not have killed me. It would have been a flesh wound only for me, yet it had taken her life. My body felt suddenly too heavy for my wings, and I had the urge to fling the cross away, but I could not. How had it come to be there? Had Beltran put it there to mock me? Again, I considered tugging at the strap to break it and throwing the thing to the earth, but when my hand met the silver—the object of Joslyn’s destruction—a sudden peace flowed through me. The cross had failed to save Danette, and it had been the weapon of Joslyn’s death, but it felt warm, living, beneath my hand.

You are never alone.

How I wished I could tell Joslyn that. How I wished I had stayed with her in the ruined castle and taken her in my arms, but wishing would not make it so. Joslyn was lost to me. But the Cruxim was right: if I could find Sabine’s anchorstone, perhaps she might be returned to me. While Sabine still lived, so must I.

Soon, a patch of dark forest spread like a stain over the landscape below. It looked as black as I felt. I wanted to nestle in it and hide myself as a nightbird might, sleeping through the day in the hope dusk might come more easily.

I fluttered to the ground and crept into the mess of oak, stumbling over roots wet with moss. Branches grasped at my feathers and the air kissed my face. I longed for the shocking refreshment of a stream in which I might wash away the past. I pushed on, deeper into the gloom, past bear and badger and burrow creatures that stared at me, mutely curious, before scurrying away. When I heard the giggle of water slipping over stones, I crawled into the stream and let it lick my skin and heal me a little. Then, I slept.

The shrill call of a cuckoo woke me. It, too, reminded me of Joslyn. It had been true, the story I had told her in Gandler’s tent while my lips stung with the bitterness of her apparent betrayal. As a lonely boy, an orphan—my mother lost to me, my father unknown to me—a nest of starlings had captured my heart. How careful I had been with them, only to find an impostor within. I had loved the cuckoo like any of the greedy, chirruping chicks, but it had killed the others and driven them from the nest. Still I had loved it. Eventually, it had been set upon by a cat, which I caught and drained, tossing its body behind a row of pox carts. I had mourned for my chicks and for my cuckoo friend, and I had avoided cats and their graceful cruelty altogether—until I met Sabine.

But then, only part cat she is; the rest of her is all woman: tempestuous, courageous, headstrong, and kind. A lioness of a woman who loved me despite the wrong I had done her. A woman who would have faith that I was searching for her still. But where to start? The riddle she had told me when Dr. Gandler had separated us made little sense.

Navel and womb. I put my hands to my head and propped myself against a knotted tree trunk to think.

Women and their riddles.

Anxious to decipher it, I stood and paced, my wings fluttering with agitation.
An ancient place:
that much I understood. If I took Sabine’s words at face value, it would not be in Paris, nor even France. Where had Joslyn said she had flown from Beltran?

Lovrijenac Fortress. Dalmatia.

No, it would not be there, not if that were a place known to Vampires. And
pythons
? A serpentine river perhaps.

A great hopelessness washed over me. There must have been thousands of Sphinx statues in the world. How long would it take me to seek them all out, to find her, and to rouse her? Centuries. Eons. I had eternity.

My mind took in the globe’s great cities: London, Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, Paris, Athens—and there, the tiny seed of hope sprouted.

Greece: a land of gods and olive groves and creatures older than history. A place where the word
history
itself was made. Was not Thebes the home of the Sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus? Oedipus had bested the creature, it was said, and she had thrown herself from a cliff. Could Sabine’s anchorstone be there, in Thebes, the birthplace of her kind? I thought of Spain, of England, France, and London—all places where love had lent me roots. In Greece, I had nothing. No one. Perhaps I was wrong. It could be anywhere, I realized.

I put my head in my hands. How would I ever find her
?

“
First, you must begin to search.”

My head jerked up. The voice was too girlish, too real to be the Maker.

“I told you to leave me.”
I directed my thoughts to the glow emanating from behind a spreading chestnut tree.

“And I told you that fate binds me to you.” Skylar stepped forward into the clearing. “If you are fated, then you will find Sabine. If it is fated, then I will help you look.”

“I do not need your help.”

“You do. But you do not know how to ask for it.”

“I would not ask for it.”

“Then I give it freely.” She strode toward me, still glowing in the greenish half-light, and put out her hand. “You should not be alone. Your thoughts themselves are poisonous. Let us fly to Greece, if that is where you wish to begin your search.”

I was too melancholy to repel her again.

She looked triumphant as she moved forward into a patch of open forest near the stream, and then she soared up into the air.

Defeated, I followed her.

W
e reached Athens at midnight, recognizing it by the gleam of marble under a ghostly moon. The white pillars of the Acropolis guided us in to a city half-forgotten by progress. Together, we swooped down to a grove on the hill of nymphs, hitting the hard ground with a thud. The rock beneath my feet steadied me, grounded me. Here was something tangible: marble from which countless Sphinxes surely must have been carved, and among them, I hoped, Sabine’s anchorstone. A quiet determination replaced the sorrow of Sabine’s absence.

Beside me, Skylar bowed her head, and once more I heard her thoughts: “
He loves her truly.”

“Yes
,” I answered silently. “
I do.”

I could see by the jerk of her head that I had surprised her. She had not expected me to intercept those private thoughts.

Nostrils flaring, she nodded before saying, “Then we have work to do. But first I must feed.”

I felt it too: a growling hunger for blood. A Vampire’s throat between my jaws would do me good, would make me feel I was avenging Joslyn and Sabine.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Let us hunt.”

It was a new thing to me, hunting with another Cruxim. Sabine and I had fed together many times, her stealth and my speed perfectly married, but I was surprised to find Skylar’s grace and her ability to blend into the shadows no less impressive than Sabine’s.

We sought out a coven house first. Sometimes, I could smell them. The walls slick with blood, the scent a metallic invitation on the night air. But we found none nearby. Instead, we slipped into a vacant whitewashed villa and dressed. Then we let our hunger lead us to a bar near Piraeus.

The harbor waters reflected a watchful moon, and the wine was sweet on my lips, made sweeter by the vinegar-dipped bread that whet our appetites as we perused the menu—watching the streets for any hint of the supernatural. We looked, for all the world, like lovers, although our eyes met only once: when we saw the one with lace bunched at his throat, his sleek curls smoothed back and a small speckle of blood marring his cravat.

A lady dined with the creature at the
taverna
next to ours. A cameo moved at her throat when she laughed, which she did often, setting her cleavage quivering. When he had finished picking at his meal with long fingers, and the waiter had cleared away the shells, the fingerbowl, and wineglasses, the Vampire followed her out onto the street.

I stood and put out my arm for Skylar. With a cute curtsey, she took it in hers, and we stepped out after them. Her small hand tucked into the crook of my arm was both strange and comforting. I had not walked with a woman like that since Evedra, and even then, I had been dressed as one of them.

Ahead of us, the woman giggled, and her heeled slippers tapped out a heartbeat on the street. The Vampire’s arm was around her now, his pale, handsome face close to hers as he slid his arm lower to clasp her waist. She did not baulk but batted her eyelashes and angled her head closer to his shoulder. One of her curls had come loose to trail down her back.

When he stopped and thrust her into the dark cave of a doorway, his lips upon hers, she gasped only a little and clutched him closer, throwing her head back.

“How long I have waited for this moment, Anastacia,” he panted.

“Then do not wait. Oh, wait no more.” She pawed at his trousers, and he stopped for a moment to unbutton them, letting them fall from his hips. “As you wish,” he murmured.

Beside me, I saw Skylar turn her head, averting her gaze from his grinding hips, which thrust the woman against the door. The woman grasped the brass knocker and moaned, rubbing herself against him as his lips met her earlobe.

Taking up the velvet ribbon of the cameo, the Vampire drew it taut.

“Now!” I commanded Skylar. “Now! Before he kills her.”

We rushed upon him, Skylar to the left and me to his right. The Vampire half-turned at our approach, but only in time to see my bared fangs descending on his neck. He made to swing his head, to struggle away from me, but found Skylar’s lips there, her teeth agleam in the thin light that issued from a room above.