Dayhunter (11 page)

“It seems you have made quite a mess, Fire Starter,” Alex said, smiling broadly at me. It was now her turn to make me twist, and I had a feeling she was going to come out of this meeting looking a lot better than me. “All throughout the southwestern territories of the U.K. people have found heaps of ashes accompanied by items like knives, swords, bits of clothing. The humans are smart enough to figure out that these ashes were from living creatures. They are going to automatically assume they were humans. Some very uncomfortable questions are being asked, and there is only so much we can suppress.”

“Get our press out there,” I argued, looking over at Macaire. “Start feeding the tabloids tales of aliens or solar flares at night.” Shoving my fingers into the front pockets of my pants, I tried to affect a look of indifference, though that was a horrible lie. This was a turn I had not considered or anticipated.

When Danaus and I used our powers to destroy the naturi, we hadn’t limited ourselves to those at the Themis Compound. We destroyed the naturi in all directions for several miles. I was just grateful to have them gone and my life intact. I hadn’t thought about what the humans would find. My focus was so entirely centered on the naturi and stopping them from breaking the seal that I had not thought about protecting our secret. Hell, what was the point? If the naturi were free, we’d have bigger things to worry about than a few people discovering that nightwalkers existed.

“Some of the Wiccans have already mobilized and are posting items on the Internet. They’re claiming that the creatures were once members of the naturi and that they were killed as part of ongoing war between them and vampires.”

“And we’re concerned about that? Don’t you realize how ridiculous this sounds?” I said incredulously, pinning the lycan with my narrowed gaze. Sure, it was the truth, but no one believed the truth anymore. “Most humans don’t know what a naturi is. They’ve never heard of them.”

“Your lack of control has thrown off our timetable,” Alexandra snapped, pointing one slender finger at me as she lurched forward a couple steps. However, she quickly came to a stop when she realized the sudden movement could be seen as an act of aggression. “The Great Awakening isn’t supposed to be for another fifty years at the earliest.”

“And what about Rowe? Don’t you think he could throw off the precious timetable?” I replied, my gaze darting back to the Elders. I didn’t know how much the lycans knew of the current naturi threat, which was growing with each passing night, but I didn’t care anymore. I wasn’t going to be the only one in the fire. It was time to up the ante.

“That is already being considered, Mira,” Elizabeth said in a calm, placating voice. She was telling me to shut up. I took the hint.

“Thank you for your valuable information, Ms. Brooks,” Macaire said. “We will not need to speak with you again.” Alex bowed slightly to the three Elders, then left the main hall without looking back at me. The silent blond man followed close on her heels, but I could feel his dark eyes on me before he disappeared through the side door.

I waited until after the door on the left was closed before I opened my mouth again. It was time to take the gloves off and get messy. I had been purposefully dressed down by someone the Coven saw as an inferior regarding something that was supremely trivial at this point, considering the problems that loomed and their own betrayal. I’d had enough.

“Shall we bring out your other guest?” I demanded, taking another couple steps forward so the Coven’s focus would be completely on me. My hands fell from my pockets and hung limp at my sides, but I was ready for any kind of an attack.

“Other guest?” Macaire repeated, tilting his head to the side. A nice act, but it wasn’t all that convincing. The other two Elders hadn’t moved, didn’t even blink at the question. In fact, Jabari hadn’t moved a muscle since I entered the room. We still had other issues that went beyond the Coven.

“The naturi,” I supplied in a voice that could have frozen the Lagoon. Macaire smiled at me in his usual condescending manner and opened his mouth to say something, but I cut off his words. “Don’t insult me! There was a naturi sleeping here last night less than an hour before dawn. Bring her out.”

Macaire blinked at me once in surprise and then looked over at Elizabeth, who was regarding me with new interest. The Elder turned his cold gaze back at me, a calculating look crossing his face as frostbite sank its teeth into the marrow of my bones.
“Impressionate,”
he slowly said as he slipped back into Italian. However, this time an old accent flavored the single word before he could catch it. Something of who he truly was snuck past his defenses while he was distracted with a new thought. “We were wondering what you and the hunter were doing out in the Lagoon so close to dawn. We knew he could sense the naturi, but we didn’t think he would be able to sense them through our web of spells.”

“He couldn’t, but
we
could,” I corrected. Macaire’s eyebrows jumped at that bit of information, and even Jabari cracked. Actually, it was just a twitch of one corner of his mouth, but it was something.

“Molto impressionante
. It explains how you were able to incinerate the naturi far from your location. It was my understanding that you could only burn that which you could see,” Macaire said. The fingers of his right hand restlessly moved on the arm of his chair, and he was now sitting up a little straighter.

“Yes, well this is all very new to me considering that my memory was wiped,” I sneered. My fingers balled into fists and it was all I could do to keep from lighting the tapestries hanging about the room on fire. “I thought the Coven would know exactly what I was capable of, considering it spent nearly a century experimenting on me.” My words dripped with sarcasm so acidic I feared they would soon eat through the marble floor.

“That was Jabari’s realm,” Macaire said with a dismissive wave of his hand, but the motion was stiffer this time and there was something that flickered in his eyes again. There had always been a certain amount of tension between Macaire and Jabari. While they never openly attacked each other, they had no problems pitting their various flunkies and followers against one another. I would have been willing to wager that either Macaire couldn’t control me or had never been given the opportunity to try.

Again the door on the left swung open, halting the conversation. Into the room stepped a female naturi. She wore a simple homespun dress and her long blond hair was braided down her back. There were five clans of naturi—earth, wind, water, light, and animal. She was too slender and willowy to be a member of the animal clan, which were typically dark, swarthy creatures rippling with muscles. A water clan member couldn’t be out of water, and her coloring was all wrong for what I had seen of the earth clan, as their hair and skin pigment had the same variety as a summer flower garden. So that left only wind and light. If she was a light clan member, I was in trouble if I attacked, as she would be able to use fire as easily as me. But I couldn’t imagine the Coven allowing a light clan member in their midst. Of course, I would never have imagined seeing a naturi walking free in the Great Hall.

With her hands folded in front of her like a nun going to prayer, she walked quietly into the room. Keeping her eyes on the Elders, she bowed her head to them, but ignored our trio completely.

“What is she doing here?” I demanded, each word struggling up my throat and past my lips. My whole body was clenched with rage. I had thought my reaction to seeing Sadira for the first time in five centuries was bad. This was infinitely worse. The sight of the slender creature with her sharp features instantly made me want to rip her apart with my bare hands. I wanted to hear her scream and plead for her life. And then I wanted to hear her plead for me to kill her.

Nightmarish memories of my two-week captivity at Machu Picchu centuries ago came screaming back with a flawless clarity. She reminded me of the starvation and the pain that flooded all of my senses so that there was no escape. The naturi had captured and tortured me in hopes of breaking my mind. They wanted me to use my powers to destroy my own kind. As I stared at her now, the scars on my back burned anew.

Danaus stepped forward so he was standing beside me. His right hand reflexively reached for a weapon that wasn’t there. Frustrated, his hand fell back to his side, clenched in a fist.

“You asked to see her,” Macaire said with laughter in his voice.

“Why is she on the island?” My voice cracked across them like a whip snapping at the air.

Macaire stiffened and moved to sit on the edge of his chair. “We have business together,” he briskly replied.

“The only business we have with their kind is their total extermination!” I took a couple slow steps toward the naturi, my hands before me with my fingers curled into claws. I didn’t have any weapons, but I would happily have killed her with my bare hands. The naturi turned frightened eyes on me and stumbled a couple of steps back, edging closer to the raised dais and the Elders.

“Macaire!” she cried in her soft lilting voice.

“Stop, Mira!” Macaire shouted, jumping to his feet. “She has the protection of the Coven.”

Those words stopped me cold. My body froze as if my mind had suddenly lost the ability to command it, had forgotten how to work my limbs. With infinite slowness I turned my head to look at the Elders. “What?” The word barely made it past the lump in my throat.

“Stop,” Macaire commanded.

I ignored him and dragged my eyes to Jabari’s face, who sat watching me. “Say it,” I snarled, my voice harsh and rough.

Jabari rose from his chair, his head held high. “She has the protection of the Coven,” he said loud and clear. His words reverberated through my chest until I was sure I would shatter into a million jagged shards.

Wrapping my arms around my waist, I nearly doubled over in horror. “How could you betray us?” I moaned. “They killed hundreds of our kind.”

“The same could be said about the man that stands beside you,” Jabari replied. A cold smile slithered across his broad lips, stretching his dark skin to accentuate his hard cheekbones. I reached back one hand, unconsciously trying to move the hunter behind me as if it would better protect him from the Coven.

“They tortured me for two weeks in hopes of using me as a weapon.” I flung the words at him, even though some part of me knew not one of them cared about the pain I had endured to protect my own kind. “They slaughtered nightwalkers in my domain.”

“Looking for you,” Elizabeth coolly interjected.

“They killed Thorne in London,” I said, but my voice had lost some of its earlier strength and venom. I didn’t like where this was going.

“In an effort to get to you,” Elizabeth replied. Her lovely face was blank of expression but her blue eyes seemed to sparkle and dance in the candlelight. “Our Jabari and Sadira were attacked, all in an effort to get to you.”

“Times have changed, Mira,” Macaire stated, drawing my wide-eyed gaze to his aged face. “It would seem as if the naturi would have no business with nightwalkers if you were not around.”

“The naturi don’t change. Not ever,” I snarled, straightening from my wounded stance.
They would not pin this on me.
But even that bitter declaration seemed to carry with it a whimper of pain. I wasn’t the reason so many of my fellow nightwalkers had been slaughtered. I wasn’t the reason the naturi hunted and killed both humans and nightwalkers. This war started long before I was ever reborn, and I was sure it would continue long after my bones had been reduced to dust.
I would not be the Coven’s scapegoat.

“Unfortunately, we cannot rid ourselves of Mira as of yet,” Jabari announced in a weary voice, as if reluctantly granting me a pardon.

I snapped. There was no more clear thought, just raw, horrible rage. The Coven was protecting our greatest enemy and threatening my life when I had done everything within my power to protect my own kind from the naturi.

Stretching my arms out on either side of my body, I started calling up great amounts of energy. Without making the conscious decision, I summoned enormous waves of power to me, pulling energy from every living creature within the region. I could feel it coming to me not just from San Clemente, but from all around Venice. At the same time, grim images of Michael’s and Thorne’s mangled remains crowded in my brain. Memories of my horrific nights with Nerian swamped me, threatening to weigh me down and deter me from my path. The Coven had to be destroyed. It didn’t matter that they were the Elders, or even if I had the ability to do it.

Overhead, the candles in the chandelier flared, awakening the shadows lounging in the far corners of the hall. The shadows lunged forward and back, reaching out from under the dais chairs and crawling up the cold stone walls. The flags and tapestries waved and rippled as if a fresh breeze had rushed in through an open window.

You can’t destroy me, desert flower.
Jabari’s dark voice whispered through my brain, threatening to shatter my concentration.
If you attempt this thing, you must be able to kill them both. Destroy the Coven, Mira. Destroy them both.

The command was little more than a faint whisper among hundreds of fragmented thoughts and painful memories. I tried to weigh the command in that second. It’s what I wanted, but now I was forced to wonder if I wanted the same thing that Jabari wanted after all his lies, betrayal, and manipulation. But I couldn’t afford to pause.

Before the thought was completely formed in my head, I was stopped by the last person I thought would ever do such a thing. Danaus came up behind me and wrapped his strong arms around me, locking my arms against my body.

“No!” I screamed, my ragged voice bouncing off the high stone walls. I already felt his power swamping me, struggling to form a cocoon around me before seeping into my skin. He was stealing away my ability to choose. Jabari hadn’t been forcing me. It was almost a test to see what I was capable of.

“Calm,” Danaus whispered, his hot breath brushing against my ear. I also heard the word repeated in my brain like a thought, blanketing my rage, suffocating the fire. He was trying to use our connection in reverse. Instead of commanding me to draw in the power and destroy, he was using his own powers to control and calm me.