Darkness Dawns (33 page)

When Chris returned, Roland was debating strategy with the others while he drew soft circles on the back of Sarah’s hand with his thumb.

“Well, Sarah was right again,” Chris announced, reclaiming his seat. “Andy got his hands on several of the police reports filed for the dead pedophiles and kiddie porn peddlers and Bastien’s vamps are unquestionably cheating on their diet.” He tapped the list of victims. “Several of these freaks were married and the vamps sent to feed on them killed the wives and children for dessert.”

Shit.
“How the hell have we not heard about this?”

“None of the victims lived in the Triangle or the Triad.”

The Triangle was made up of the neighboring cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. The Triad consisted of Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem.

“And they were spread out and camouflaged in enough
different ways that no correlations have been drawn between the deaths.” Sarah looked to Roland. “I wish I had been wrong.” Giving her hand a supportive squeeze, he returned his attention to planning their attack.

The hallway outside the mystery woman’s bedroom was empty when Seth appeared in it, the sheaf of papers Chris had given him clasped in one hand. A quick look inside showed him the room, too, was devoid of her presence.

No big surprise there. The poor girl still wasn’t sleeping.

Worried about her continued insomnia, he had reached out very subtly with his gifts and determined that it was no longer that she was unwilling to sleep. She
couldn’t
sleep. Not until she felt safe. It seemed to be some sort of subconscious defense mechanism she was helpless to extinguish.

He, David, and Darnell had all trodden carefully around her and made themselves appear as harmless as possible. He didn’t know what else he could do to reassure her.

Of course, she was a tiny thing, barely reaching five feet. It was a little hard to look harmless when one was at least a foot and a half taller than her and outweighed her by a good 100, 120 pounds.

Seth strode down the hallway and began making his way downstairs. The only sounds of life came from the great hall, which—except for the stone walls—now resembled a modern living room. Following them, he saw David standing in the shadows outside the entrance and started to call out a greeting.

David glanced up and placed a finger to his lips.

Seth instantly altered his approach, silencing his footsteps as he joined him and peered into the room.

Darnell was perched on the edge of the sofa, fingers and thumbs working a Playstation controller. On the large-screen television,
Tomb Raider’
s Lara Croft took a running leap from
a ledge and grabbed the end of a rope that dangled over a dark, cavernous room.

The mystery woman stood beside the sofa, out of arm’s reach as she always did, eyes glued to the screen.

“See,” Darnell said with a boyish grin, “I told you she’d make it.”

Seth was shocked to see her eyes light up with what would have been a smile if her lips had moved.

“Now I’ll make her swing, jump to the next rope, swing again, and land on that ledge over there.”

Looking doubtful, she returned her attention to the screen and leaned against the arm of a recliner arranged perpendicularly to the sofa.

The pale blue V-neck T-shirt she wore clung to small breasts and left bare her prominent collarbones and arms that weren’t as skeletal now that she was eating regularly. Black and blue pajama bottoms hung on bony hips that had finally gained a bit of flesh on them. Her small feet were bare.

She was still far too thin and looked so fragile it broke Seth’s heart. And David’s. And Darnell’s.

Her face was less gaunt and had more color. It was a pretty face with full lips, a pert nose, and winged brows. Dark shadows still lingered beneath her eyes, however, a testament to her fatigue.

Bearing in mind the fact that this was her eighth day without sleep, she looked fan-freakin’-tastic.

Seth had once read about a sleep study a university had conducted to see how long a person could go without sleep. The longest any of the participants had lasted was eleven days. By only the fourth, participants’ thought processes and motor skills had become sluggish. Problems with short-term memory had arisen. They had had difficulty concentrating, become delusional, and been extremely moody, symptoms that had steadily increased in severity as the days progressed.

Not so their mystery woman. The only evidence of her lack of sleep lay in the bruising under her green eyes.

Beneath Seth’s scrutiny, those eyes widened as Lara Croft swung from one rope to another and grabbed it.

“Whew!” Darnell sent her another grin of triumph.

Seth’s breath caught when she smiled back.

Darnell went very still for a second but—to his credit—continued as though nothing special had taken place. “Once Lara gets over to the ledge, keep an eye out for medpacks. She’s running low and there should be one hidden around there somewhere.”

Damned if their guest didn’t move to sit on the very edge of the chair’s cushion and lean forward to watch Lara Croft’s progress more closely.

Seth looked at David and raised his brows. “How long has this been going on?” he asked too softly for human ears to catch.

“The whole time you’ve been gone,” he responded, equally quiet. “Darnell needed to take a break from trying to decrypt those files we snatched.”

Music indicating a discovery trilled from the television. “Cool. More flares.
And
a grenade launcher.”

Seth winced. “Couldn’t he have picked a less violent game?”

David shrugged. “He was already playing it when she came down to watch him.”

“Has Lara shot or been attacked by anything yet?”

“Just some bats. And it didn’t seem to alarm our girl.”

“Good. I’m not sure how much of her rescue she remembers and worry she might not react well to violence, even if it is only in a game. There was a hell of a lot of gunfire that night.”

David smiled wryly. “I’ve never been shot so many times in one night
or
by such high-caliber weapons. Damned things stung.” He nodded to the papers in Seth’s hand. “Speaking of bloodbaths, what happened at the meeting?”

Seth sighed, feeling infinitely weary. “Sebastien has done the impossible. Excluding the twenty-three Roland and
Marcus have already managed to destroy, Sebastien has fifty-seven vampires living beneath his roof.”

David’s eyes widened. “What?”

“He’s trying to save them,” he said, feeling the same sadness Lisette had demonstrated when she had made the declaration earlier. “Making them eat food. Assigning them pedophiles to feed upon instead of innocents. But most are already straying from the path he’s chosen for them.”

“Did he turn them all himself?”

“I don’t know.”

The mystery woman suddenly leapt up and hurried over to the television to point at something on the large screen.

“What is it?” Darnell asked, making Lara backtrack a few paces. “Oh, a crevice. I didn’t even see that.” Lara jumped up, grabbed the edge, and crawled in. “All right! A medpack. Thanks.”

Smiling, she returned to her seat.

“How about that,” David murmured with a smile of his own. “I should’ve known if anyone could make her smile it would be Darnell.”

Darnell was the least intimidating of the three of them. Exceedingly tall with a lean build and medium-brown skin, he was twenty-six years old and had a naturally cheerful disposition few could resist.

Now if he could only entice her to speak, Seth thought.

David sobered. “So, let’s hear it. Tell me what you’ve learned that everyone else doesn’t know.”

“Discerning bastard,” Seth grumbled.

“No more so than you. Spill it.”

Seth hesitated. There
was
something the others hadn’t caught. Something he feared would have made them refuse to take Sebastien alive if they had known it. “Sebastien has a grudge against Roland. I don’t know the source of it. But he’s been trying to catch up with him for two hundred years, tracking and following him to every city he’s inhabited.”

“Roland doesn’t know why?”

“No.” Seth held up the papers. “Reordon listed many of the countries, cities, and towns Sebastien has visited, along with dates and …” He was loath to say it. “He was in Scotland the year Ewen was killed.”

David swore.

The Scottish immortal had been a favorite and had been mourned by them all.

“There were so few vampires in his region and none were banding together,” Seth continued. “We always wondered how one could have killed a Guardian of Ewen’s strength. It never occurred to us that it could have been another immortal.”

“The others can’t know.”

Seth agreed. “Even if it was in self-defense, they would want his head.” And Seth was now burdened with the knowledge that his own failure had caused it all.

David’s gaze turned piercing, seeing far more than Seth wanted him to. “You must stop blaming yourself.”

“It’s my fault.”

“No, it isn’t,” he insisted. “You can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t be every
thing
to every
one.
”

“If I had been there to help him, Sebastien wouldn’t have suffered. He wouldn’t have begun hating immortals and harboring vampires. And Ewen would still be alive.”

“There is no proof he killed Ewen. Only speculation.”

“He has tried to kill Roland three times thus far. And probably would have killed Marcus and Sarah if he felt it necessary.”

David may not blame Seth for this, but the others did. They had not verbalized it or acknowledged it consciously, but their silence had said it all.

Seth had screwed up. He always aided the new immortals after their transformations and, because he hadn’t aided Sebastien …

“Did they object to your intention to rehabilitate him?” David asked, abandoning his attempts to ease Seth’s guilt.

“No.”

“When are you going in?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Are you sure you want me to remain here? Five against fifty-seven could get a little hairy.”

“I’m sure. I want our guest safe at all times and know that, with you here, she will be.”

As one, they turned to look at the mystery woman and were surprised to find her staring back as though she had heard every word.

“Who was Lady Bethany?”

Sarah and Roland lay together in their bedroom as dawn broke, only a dim nightlight warding off complete darkness.

Both were anxious about the coming battle and found sleep elusive.

To take her mind off the danger Roland would soon face, Sarah had decided to ask about the woman Étienne had mentioned.

Lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, Roland stroked and toyed with her hair as she snuggled closer. “Lady Bethany, Countess of Westcott. Also known as Bethany Bennett.”

“Was she Marcus’s wife?”

“No, but she was the only woman he has ever loved. And he loved her for a very long time.”

Sarah recalled the grief that had flared in Marcus’s eyes when Étienne had offered his condolences. “Did she die?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

Well, that was cryptic.

Shifting, she folded her hands on his chest and propped her chin on them. “Will you tell me?”

Smiling down at her, he drew the backs of his fingers across her cheek. “I don’t know that you would believe me if I did. It’s a very strange story.”

She smiled. “Stranger than vampires and immortals?”

“Believe it or not, yes. It’s why every immortal knows about it. Even the minstrels of my time could not have concocted such a sad tale.”

“Now you
have
to tell me.”

He nodded his ascent but said no more.

“Well?” she prompted, poking him in the side.

He jumped and laughed when she hit a ticklish spot, then promptly grabbed her fingers so she wouldn’t do it again. “I am. I’m just trying to decide where to start—the beginning or the end.”

“The beginning,” she decided for him.

“As you wish.” He lifted his head and brushed her lips with a kiss, then relaxed back against the pillow. “Have you ever seen those stories on television in which a dog that has been horribly abused is taken in by someone who treats it well and loves it and, as a result, becomes fiercely loyal to its new owner? So much so that it would die defending or protecting him?”

Sarah studied him curiously. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s pretty much what happened to Marcus. He was born Brice, heir to the Earl of Dunnenford, in the late twelfth century. His father died when he was a boy and his mother was pressured into remarrying quickly. His stepfather turned out to be a sadistic bastard who beat Marcus and his mother every chance he could get. After he discovered Marcus’s gift, he abused him even more. This went on for years and he eventually killed Marcus’s mother, claiming she fell down the stairs.”

Dismayed, Sarah felt her heart grow heavy as Roland continued.

“He would’ve killed Marcus, too, if Marcus hadn’t fled, sought out Lord Robert, Earl of Fosterly—a man he knew his stepfather feared—and become his squire. Lord Robert was a good man and treated Marcus like a younger brother, giving him the friendship and affection he had been missing. So,
naturally, Marcus loved him like a father or the older brother he had never had, respected him above all others, and would have gladly given his life to protect him.

“Then one day, when Marcus was around seventeen—he had been with Robert three or four years I think at that point—Robert brought home a woman unlike any Marcus had ever encountered.”

“Lady Bethany?”

“Yes. Robert and three of his men had found her in the forest, covered in blood and searching frantically for her brother, Josh. He told Marcus the two had been attacked by an enemy he was dealing with at the time. But Marcus found out later she was actually from the future.”

Sarah stared at him, doubting she had heard him correctly. “I’m sorry—what?”

“Lady Bethany was, in reality, Bethany Bennett, born in Houston, Texas, near the end of the twentieth century. Around the time
you
were, now that I think on it.”