Dawnbreaker (13 page)

“Mira?” she whispered over cracked lips.

“I’m here. The naturi are gone,” I said in a low, soothing voice. She had not yet opened her eyes, yet when she did, she let out a wounded whimper at finding herself in what amounted to a freshly dug grave. Knox leaned down, extending his hand to her while Tristan took her elbow, both men bringing her slowly to her feet. Amanda wobbled once, and then took a long sniff of the air. She had picked up either Shelly’s or Danaus’s scent, and she was hungry. Her blue eyes glowed as they focused on the young witch and a smile curved her lips.

I stepped forward and placed a restraining hand on Amanda’s shoulder. A low rumble of warning rose from the back of her throat but I ignored it. “Amanda, you can’t feed here. Knox and Tristan will help you.” I then directed my attention to Knox, who was standing on her right. “Take the boat and get her back to Savannah. Let her hunt there. We’ll take one of the other boats back.”

“Do you need any help with…?” Knox nodded toward the naturi that still lay on the ground.

I shook my head, a frown teasing the corner of my lips. “No, we’ll be fine. Get going.”

The female naturi finally began to stir when Amanda was being helped back to the boat with Tristan and Knox. She jerked into a sitting position, the manacles jangling as she raised her hands to ward me off. Her wide green eyes swept over the area, quickly taking in me, Danaus, and Shelly.

“They’re all gone. Dead,” I confirmed, in what I thought was my most threatening voice. I must have been off my game because she actually sighed in relief. “And you’re left with us,” I continued, waiting for the fear or at least the burning hatred to kick in.

“Who are you?” she inquired in a soft voice that somehow reminded me of the wind. “Could you help me take these off?” She lifted her chained wrists to me and I laughed.

“I’m a nightwalker,” I said, causing her face to crumple.

“Oh, I guess not,” she murmured, lowering her hands back to her lap.

I stood before the naturi with my hands on my hips and my legs spread wide. “Who are you?”

“My name is Cynnia. Did you come to rescue the nightwalker they were holding?”

I ignored her question. I thought it was obvious why we were there. “Why are you bound? Are you a prisoner?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” I repeated between clenched teeth when she didn’t say anything else.

“They accused me of being a traitor,” she softly said, dropping her eyes down to the iron manacles around her slender wrists.

“Mira!” Danaus snapped. I understood why he was suddenly upset. Her words had left me ill at ease as well. It was too convenient. A traitor to the naturi in the hands of the enemy. It seemed like a dream come true, but it felt like a trap.

“Scan the area!” I replied without looking over my shoulder at him.

“Mira?” the naturi asked, her head popping up again. “Mira? As in the Fire Starter?”

“The one and only,” I said with a devilish grin. She got a good look at my fangs and lurched backward a couple feet, trying to edge away from me, but there was nowhere for her to go.

Danaus’s power swept over the island and over the surrounding marshlands. I flinched inwardly, my body still sore and aching from our earlier connection. I was in no hurry to feel his powers again.

“There aren’t any naturi in the area,” Danaus replied.

“Where’s Rowe?” I demanded, taking a step closer to Cynnia.

“Rowe?” Her voice wavered as her gaze darted from me to Shelly and then to Danaus.

“Yes, Rowe. Where is the one-eyed bastard?”

“I—I don’t know. I’ve never met him,” she said with a shake of her head.

I was on her in a flash. Kneeling next to her, I roughly grabbed a chunk of her hair and jerked her head back. I pressed my knife blade into the long line of her throat, drawing a bead of blood that slipped down her neck. “Where is Rowe?” I growled.

“I’m telling the truth. I don’t know,” she said.

“Mira!” Danaus sharply said, snapping my head around to look at the hunter. A low snarl rumbled in the back of my throat, and my upper lip curled so he could see my fangs. It was a warning. “What if she doesn’t know anything?” he asked, his right hand on the handle of the blade attached to his waist. He was ready to attack if he thought I pressed things too far.

“Then she’s going to die in agony,” I said, tightening my grip on her hair, causing her to let out a little whimper.

“Please…I—I don’t know anything,” Cynnia said. “I just arrived here and they said I planned to betray my sister. I’ve been held captive for days.” The words flowed from her like a river.

“Your sister? Who’s your sister?” I asked, lowering the knife slightly.

“Aurora,” she whispered.

I lurched to my feet and took a couple steps away from the naturi. At the same time, Danaus stepped forward so he was now standing beside me. I suspected that his thoughts were whirling away in the same direction as mine. Could it be possible? Were we truly holding the sister of the queen of the naturi? I couldn’t be that lucky, but even as my doubts mounted, I couldn’t get over the fact that she looked familiar. And now I knew why. She looked like Aurora. I’d caught a brief glimpse of Aurora centuries ago, when we battled the naturi on Machu Picchu and her frighteningly beautiful face had been burned into my brain. I would never forget it, and now I saw kneeling before me a younger, more vulnerable version of the queen.

“You’re Aurora’s sister?” I demanded slowly, needing to say the words aloud.

“Yes,” she winced, possibly realizing her vulnerability now. “Please, I love my sister. I would never do anything to harm her. I came here looking for my brother. This war needs to be stopped, and I thought my brother would be able to help me.”

“Who’s your brother?” I asked, swallowing a smile. I felt like Alice slipping down the rabbit’s hole. It all seemed too fantastic.

“His name is Nerian, and he has brown hair like me. He—”

“Had,” I interrupted coldly. “Nerian is dead.”

She lifted wide green eyes to my face, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. “You killed him, didn’t you?” she asked, though the question wasn’t accompanied by the splash of tears I had been expecting. In fact, she seemed quite calm about the news.

“Yes,” I hissed, grinning from ear to ear. Nerian had been my tormentor at Machu Picchu, my constant waking nightmare. I couldn’t begin to express the relief I felt at wiping his existence from the face of the planet.

Cynnia shook her head and looked back down at her hands. “I never knew him.”

“Count yourself lucky. He was a cruel, sadistic bastard. Completely insane.”

“A good soldier,” Danaus added, to my surprise. “He believed in your sister’s cause. He would never have helped you.”

“Why here? Why were you being held here?” I demanded, drawing her attention back to me.

“I don’t know. I was brought here from across the ocean. They seemed to be following someone.”

“They were following you,” Danaus said. I looked over my shoulder to find the hunter’s intense gaze locked on my face. “They followed you from Europe back to your home.”

It was an interesting theory. “Why?” I murmured, sliding my hands into my back pockets as I stared down at the naturi once again. She was a strange puzzle piece that I had to figure out if we were to survive the next few nights.

“For two possible reasons,” he said. Danaus walked forward so until he was standing beside me, his arms folded over his strong chest. “They expect you to kill her.”

“Which would not be out of the ordinary for me,” I said with a nod. I tended to kill the naturi and ask questions later. The naturi were better off burned to a crisp, not running around causing problems. “And as the sister of their queen, it could definitely work to unite the splintered factions within the naturi host. The evil nightwalker kills the sweet, innocent younger sister of Aurora, unifying them against a common evil. Of course, that’s assuming she’s telling the truth.”

Cynnia’s head popped up and her mouth fell open to argue with me, but the words halted in her throat when I pointed my blade at her.

“Or they expect you to take her hostage and torture her for information,” Danaus continued.

“That wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me either,” I admitted with a nod. “But then they could be counting on me wanting to have control of Aurora’s so-called sister as a bargaining chip. We take her with us, and she kills us all in our sleep.”

Frowning, I slid the knife back into the sheath on my side as I stared at the naturi, turning over the different options facing me. Killing her now would rid the world of one more naturi. But leaving her alive gave me that chance to garner a little information out of her. And what better source of information could I ask for than Aurora’s sister?

What’s more, it might actually draw Rowe to my side, at long last. The naturi had been happy to appear in Venice when it looked like a naturi was being held by the Coven. If word reached him that I was holding a naturi hostage, especially if it was his wife-queen’s sister, then he might finally come running. And ending this standoff between the naturi and the nightwalkers was dependent upon Rowe finally meeting an untimely demise.

We could use her to draw out Rowe.
I pushed the suggestion into Danaus’s brain, preferring to keep my plans private from both Shelly and Cynnia. The earth witch had turned a sickly shade of green when I put the knife to the naturi’s throat. I was reluctant to count on her to keep her mouth shut when it came to the well-being of my new captive.

Do you think he will come for her?

Don’t know. But he hasn’t come gunning for me, so why not try something new?

We have to leave for Peru soon. We’re out of time.

I frowned. He was right, we were running out of time. But I was unwilling to waste this unique opportunity. Cynnia was the first naturi I had met that didn’t seem to immediately want to kill me or use me. I had to find a way to get a little information out of her before I finally killed her.

“Do you still have that house? The one with the basement?” I asked, looking over at the hunter from the corner of my eye.

He shook his head, a frown pulling at his lips. “No. Burned down.”

I wasn’t surprised. I had killed Nerian in that house. It would have been a perfect place to keep Cynnia locked up for a day or two, but I suspected that Danaus had seen to it that the house burned down in an effort to wipe away all evidence of both his and Nerian’s existence.

“Then we’ll take her back to my town house. Shelly, can you replicate the sleep spell that they used?”

“Th-The sleep spell?” she stammered, suddenly nervous. She wrung her hands together, her eyes darting from me to the naturi watching us. “Yes, I can duplicate it. It’s an easy enough spell.”

“It’s your lucky night,” I sneered at Cynnia. Reaching down, I grabbed the chain linking her manacles together and jerked her to feet. “You’re going to live awhile longer. And the longer you live depends on how useful you prove to be. Lie to me and you’ll wish I killed you now.”

Mira, you don’t have to be so cruel. She’s terrified as it is,
Danaus chastised, following close on my heels.

I laughed.
You haven’t even begun to see cruel.

Twelve

D
anaus parked my car and sat with his hands gripping the steering wheel. I sat in the backseat with Cynnia, splitting my attention between my captive and Danaus, who was growing angrier by the minute. The long silent drive had given him ample time to stew about what had happened on the island.

“We need to talk,” he bit out, still staring straight ahead. It was clear to even Cynnia that he was talking to me. I looked up and met his blue gaze in the rearview mirror. This wasn’t going to be pretty. I opened my mouth to argue that we still needed to see to Cynnia when he snapped, “Now!” There was no avoiding this confrontation.

“Shelly, take Cynnia inside. Get her something to eat and drink,” Danaus directed in a hard voice that left no room for argument, but that didn’t stop me from hissing at the back of his head. I didn’t want the naturi to feel as if she were suddenly a guest in my house when she was really a prisoner.

While Shelly escorted Cynnia inside to the comfort of my home, Danaus and I walked across the street to one of the many small parks that dotted the city. For the first time in more than month, I didn’t glance over my shoulder, looking for a naturi ready to put a knife in my back. For a brief time they were gone and my city was safe again. I just had to deal with Danaus’s anger over what I had convinced him to do.

“You lied to me!” he snarled. “You were so desperate to convince me that nightwalkers aren’t evil, and you lied to me. You destroyed their souls.”

“Don’t put this all on me. You knew what was happening. You could have stopped at any time, but you didn’t because we were desperate,” I argued, taking a couple steps away from the hunter. We were both still armed. I didn’t want to be the one to throw the first punch, but I would be ready if it came to that.

“You said we wouldn’t destroy their souls. The goal was to kill them!” he ranted, pacing away from me and back again.

“I didn’t want to. I tried. Couldn’t you tell? You were in my brain. You’ve got the power to control me. Can’t you tell that I tried?” A sickening feeling grew in the pit of my stomach as I replayed in my head that brief moment of panicked indecision. I had been left with an ugly choice of destroying the naturi souls or the chance that Danaus would destroy me if I fought him. Or worse still, he could have withdrawn his powers before killing our opponents, leaving us both weak and vulnerable.

But Danaus was right in his outrage. The decision to destroy their souls was growing too easy. There had been too little hesitation on my part when my attempt to burn their hearts failed, and no hesitation to reach out into Savannah and kill all those within my domain.

“This has to stop!” he proclaimed.

“I know,” I said in a wavering voice. I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep shuddering breath. “But what if there’s more that we can do if we only learn to control this?”