Eternal Shadows (16 page)

I let a few moments of silence pass, making sure I had fully absorbed the lie I would have to tell later. Then I got back to the meat of the conversation. “Warren told me he didn’t think you had caught Malachi and Tabitha.”

Cade’s face hardened. “They got away, yes. But not for long.”

“How will you find them?”

“We have our ways,” Cade said.

“Are you really going to have them killed?” No one seemed surprised that I had overheard that part of the conversation.

“They made a serious attempt to break the law by which we all live,” Aurelia said. “Death is the punishment.”

“The law that says not to expose us?”

“Yes.”

“But, they haven’t. It didn’t work. You covered it all up.”

Aurelia’s perfectly plucked eyebrows drew together. “In times of war, intent is good enough.”

“War? What does that have to do with anything?” Human politics shouldn’t have that kind of an effect on vampire politics.

“Not the human war, Kassandra,” Rhys said as though reading my mind. “We have our own issues at the moment.”

“A vampire war?”

“Yes.”

“At the same time as the human war.”

“Unfortunately.”

“And yet you still find time to try to end the human war?”

The general set his chin on his fist as he regarded me and my thought process. “The timing is regrettable. Most likely, we could have ended the fighting between the human nations some time ago, had we not been forced to deal with fighting within our own species as well. Though, given the intentions of the other side, that was probably their objective.”

“Other side? This isn’t just a dispute between families?” That strange feeling crept up on me again. I started to draw my knees up to my chest, but it hurt too much. I placed my feet back on the floor.

Madge snorted. “Civil war is more accurate.” She tossed that silver thing in her hand across the room. It landed with a
thunk
in the wood of the lone bookshelf that stood right to the side of Rhys. I gasped. It was a thin blade of some kind. Like an oversized needle.

And she had just put a hole in the bookshelf my mother had picked out while we were in India.

I jumped to my feet. “Dammit, Madge! That was my mother’s!” The pain caught up to me. My ribs screamed and I dropped back to my chair. I waited for the stabbing ache to pass, doing my best to glare at Madge in the meantime.

She watched at me for a long moment, then shrugged. “We can get you another.”

“You can’t get me another!”

“Madge, that was inconsiderate.” The general’s tone sounded scolding, but Madge didn’t seem overly affected. She remained reclined in her chair.

“I’ll get her another one.”

Rhys grabbed the knife, dagger, whatever the hell it was, and pulled it free from the wood. “You know as well as the rest of us that you can’t replace family possessions that easily.” He pocketed the item instead of returning it to her. “Think before you do something stupid.”

Madge stood and tucked her hair behind one ear. “There can’t possibly be that much damage.”

Millie walked across the room and fingered the dent her sister had made. “You should apologize.”

“No thanks.” Madge headed for the door, the fake scent of her perfume following her. I did my best to stay in my seat. As much as I wanted to beat her senseless, I knew I’d never be able to get near her in my current condition.

Rhys grabbed her by the arm before she could grab the door knob. “Kassandra’s a part of this family now, the same as the rest of us.”

“Not quite.” She yanked her arm away from him. Suddenly, the silver blade was in her hands again. Rhys’s jean pocket was slit down the middle.

She surprised me when she looked over her shoulder as she walked through the door. “Sorry,” she said. Then she was gone.

I didn’t feel like accepting.

Millie set a hand on my shoulder. “She’s not herself. I’m sorry about that. The damage isn’t so bad, though. I’ll fill it for you.”

“It’s okay. Thanks.” Why the hell was Madge carrying around something like that anyway? And she didn’t have to pick on me like that. I had enough trouble in my life as it was.

“I’ll have a talk with her,” Rhys said.

“No.” Millie let her hand drop from my shoulder. “I’ll talk to her. And I’m sorry about your pants.” She flicked the flap of denim that had once been a pocket. “But you should have known not to try to take that from her.”

“I would have given it back eventually.”

“I’m sure. But still, you know how attached she is to it.”

Rhys’s expression twisted as though he had just tasted something unpalatable. “Ridiculous.”

For as disgusted as he looked, Millie’s soft expression was all understanding and sympathy. “We all have things we cannot let go of,” she said. Then she looked over her shoulder at the general and Aurelia who had been rather quiet about the whole thing. “Do you need me for anything else?”

The general waved a hand in her direction. “No. Go find your sister.”

Millie left, and the room got very, very silent. The general and Aurelia stared into each other’s eyes as though they were having a private conversation, one which needed no words. Cade had his back to me, facing the boxes that littered the table at the back of the room. They all looked exactly the same as the one I had seen the other day. The one with the hand.

A shudder ran through me before I could stop it. Six boxes now. If one held a severed hand, then what did the others hold?

Rhys stepped in front of me, blocking my view. “Are you all right?”

I leaned back so I wouldn’t have to hold up my head when I looked at him. “What’s in those boxes?”

No surprise crossed his features. Just reluctance. I saw it in his shoulders and the way they slumped just slightly. “You already saw the first one. You don’t need to see the others.”

“I want to know.”

He watched me for a long time. Or at least, it felt like a long time. I caught him chewing on the inside of his lip. I’d never seen him do that before. Then he sighed, but didn’t move away. “Cade, tell her what’s in the boxes.” He held my gaze the entire time. I didn’t try to break it. I felt better looking at his gorgeous blue eyes. I had a basic idea of what Cade would describe.

I heard the boxes move across the table, and what I suspected were the lids being removed. Cade spoke mechanically, detached, as though he were simply relaying data from some horrible investigation. “The first box came the day Julius arrived, you know that. The hand inside belonged to an associate of ours who had been missing for the better part of two decades. Yesterday, while you were being thrown into traffic, five more boxes were delivered by standard mail. They contain a second hand, a foot, an ear, another foot, and an entire head. As far as we can tell, not one of them came from the same vampire. The ones Aurelia was able to identity were all connected to the other powerful families in the Western Alliance, and all have been missing for anywhere from ten to thirty years.”

I still stared at Rhys’s perfect face, but the image of the mummified hand played over and over again in my head. My imagination integrated what I had seen in the first box until I had mental pictures of the contents of each new wooden box. “Why? What does it mean?” My words came out as a whisper, but it didn’t matter.

The general answered me. “This argument has been going on for the better part of the past century, but it has always stayed as just that—a verbal argument. Now, the situation is coming to a head. The other side has begun to make their moves. We will be in a state of real civil war in a matter of short years.”

What a great time to join the vampire race. I’d traded one war for another. At least I was used to being at the front of it. Always a general’s daughter. It must have been written somewhere in my threads of fate.

“The hand looked like it had been dead for centuries,” I said, still staring at Rhys, using him as my anchor so I could continue to think clearly.

“Yes. That happens after a draining,” the general said.

Last time this conversation had happened, Rhys had stopped them from telling me all the gory details. As I asked my next question, I watched his face carefully. “What’s draining?”

Rhys didn’t make a move to stop anyone from answering me. I couldn’t believe it when his lips began to move. “Draining is one of the few ways we can be killed, and it can be done two ways. One, you cut a vampire and simply let them bleed until there is no blood left in their body. This way is harder since we heal quickly. The wound has to be kept open. The second way…” he hesitated, his gaze dropping from mine briefly.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, though I wanted to know badly. Not because I still wanted to kill myself—I’d gotten over that—but because that sense of dread had returned. I needed this information. It was vital.

Rhys’s fingers tightened around the arms of the chair, but he looked at me again. “The second way is for one vampire to bite another. By drinking another vampire’s blood you quicken the blood loss and keep the wound constantly open. The vampires in the boxes were drained this way.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I actually made any sound.

Rhys leaned down close. His scent filled my nose and cleared my head. For one second I forgot about the severed body parts that sat only feet away. “Don’t ever let another vampire bite you for any reason,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

I nodded. My heart thumped again. My gaze flicked down to Rhys’s lips and for a moment I had a crazy daydream about what it would be like to kiss him.

I made myself think about the boxes.

“And so, the lack of blood makes them look so old?” I asked before I could think about other things.

Rhys moved back, giving me space. I didn’t want space.

“Yes. If we’re drained of the blood we’ve acquired for ourselves, our bodies decay almost immediately to the state they would have been had we died when we were turned.”

“Only mummified.”

“Yes. The Egyptians actually got the idea from early vampires.”

“They never told us that in school.”

The corner of his mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile. “You’re going to learn a lot of things like that now.”

“Sounds great.” Sounds like an idiot. God, what was wrong with me?

Aurelia stood, going to the boxes and looking at their contents. “Rhys, why don’t you take Kassandra back to bed. This is much too early for her to be up, and she needs to feed. I know Warren is awake and willing.”

I guessed her word was as good as law, because Rhys lifted me from my chair without another word. He did it so swiftly I barely felt a thing. My muscles started to scream out of habit and expectation, but then I realized he hadn’t hurt me at all. It felt good to move painlessly. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

The general, Aurelia
, and Cade were speaking in low whispers as we left. So low I doubted even Rhys could understand.

We were in my room in an instant. I really wanted to get better at that. It felt so cool when Rhys did it. I was getting better, but I doubted I could get up a flight of stairs, turn corners and open a door without breaking something.

He set me down on my bed then sat facing me on the edge. I didn’t feel like sleeping.

“Did you send Warren away?” he asked after a quick glance around my otherwise empty room.

“No, but he followed me downstairs before. He’s probably entertaining himself somewhere. Or sleeping. He looked tired.”

“You need to feed.”

“I’m fine. Warren needs to sleep.”

“I’ll get you blood from the kitchen.” He stood.

I grabbed his wrist. Our eyes met again, and I forgot why I had stopped him. I released my grip. “Nevermind,” I muttered, staring at my sheets.

“I’ll be right back.” His voice was quiet, with a hint of uncertainty. He left.

I grabbed my dragon from my pillow and groaned, toppling over onto my bed, hiding my face in my rumpled sheets.

I expected the mummified remains to haunt my thoughts as I fell asleep, but they didn’t.

All I saw was Rhys. And if he came back with the blood, I wasn’t awake to know it.

Chapter Thirteen: A Dream

I dreamed of Rhys again.

This time he was inside the painting that hung in my father’s study. The different shades of green made his eyes seem all that more blue. He wore old fashioned clothes again—a knee-length plain gown with hose and ankle-high shoes. But he didn’t look silly. He looked absolutely perfect.

And his hand was extended to me.

I took it, setting my pale hand against his. I’d never seen him so pale before. Even though the sun shone on both of us, his skin was that flawless Irish cream color, the same as mine. It would take a week or more at the beach to change anything about that.

He pulled me close and I felt a smile break out over my lips. My heart hammered in my chest, beating quickly and regularly. It had been so long since I’d felt my pulse.

Rhys wrapped his arms around me and I set my head against his chest. As warm as always. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of safety that came with being so near him. A steady rhythm drummed beneath my ear, almost lulling me to sleep.

His heart.

Rhys had a beating heart.

I’d never heard so much as a stray beat from him before. Not like my heart, which acted up on a regular basis. Sinking into him, I let out a quiet breath and listened, memorizing the unique sound his heart made. I slid my hands around his waist and flattened my palms against his back to keep him from putting any space between us.

He held me tighter.

I heard him whisper something, but I missed it. Still, it felt familiar, like he had spoken to me, so I lifted my head, mourning the loss of his heartbeat right beneath my ear, but forgetting it the moment I looked into his eyes.

His hands wandered to my face, tracing my nose, cheekbones, eyes
, and jaw. I closed my eyes. He cupped my face in his hands and I felt his breath come close, caressing my cheek for the short moment before his lips met mine.

My heart skipped a beat.

My eyes snapped open, and I recognized the S-shaped crack in my bedroom ceiling.

I waited for that familiar hammering of my heart against my ribs that always happened to me when I woke up suddenly. But my heart remained still. I felt dead after remembering what it felt like to have a living heart.

My lips tingled with the memory of Rhys’s kiss.

I’d never been kissed before in my life.

Okay, there had been this one time with Tanner Brawnbeck in seventh grade, but that had been god-awful and I preferred to pretend it never happened.

This had been…oh, boy. I touched my lips tentatively. I don’t know what I thought I would find. Certainly not Rhys. Slamming my hand back onto my mattress, I tried to chase the dream away.

No luck. Closing my eyes, I could see everything again perfectly. I could feel everything perfectly.

Unlike the sloppy lack of technique I had experienced with Tanner, Rhys knew what he was doing. Well, Dream Rhys knew. Just enough pressure and just enough gentleness.

I forced my eyes open again.

I didn’t know the first thing about kissing. Not other than watching movies. But Dream Rhys was a figment of my imagination. That meant the dream kiss had nothing to do with Rhys, and everything to do with my own perception, however uneducated, of what a kiss should feel like.

I wasn’t making myself feel any better.

I sat up, surprised when only a dull ache followed, rather than the pain I had fallen asleep with. The sun shone in through the window by my bed, and Hello Kitty Clock told me it was past noon.

I’d never slept this much as a human. And I thought vampires weren’t supposed to need as much sleep. Huh.

The kiss came back to me like a flash in a movie.

A shower would be good. It would clear my head. I swung my legs out of bed with only minimal discomfort and stood.

Then I saw him.

Propped up against the wall farthest from my bed, Rhys sat on the floor, one leg extended, the other bent. His arms were folded securely over his chest, wrinkling the same shirt he had been wearing the night before. His eyes were closed and he didn’t react when I took two experimental steps.

I’d never seen him asleep before.

My dream hadn’t really done him justice.

Ack! No. Stop it, Kassandra. A dream created by the subconscious is bad enough, leave daydreams out of it.

I’d crept all the way over to him before I could stop myself. He still didn’t move. Odd. I never would have pegged him as a heavy sleeper.

Carefully, I bent my knees until I was crouched in front of him, just off to the side of his bent leg so I could get a good look. He looked younger while he slept. I’d never realized how much tension he usually kept in his face until now when it was completely gone. Everything was softer. Who would have thought he could get more handsome.

The scent of him washed over me, and I realized it had been missing from my dream. Of course, so had our dead hearts. My gaze flicked to his chest, remembering the way it had felt to lay there and feel his heart pump blood through his living body. Suddenly I wondered what it was really like to live so long dead. Five hundred years was a long time. Did you forget what it felt like to be truly alive? Maybe it didn’t matter at all, maybe you just got used to it. My body didn’t feel lifeless. Different, yes, but I didn’t really feel like I was dead.

Only when my heart beat and I got a surge of life did I consciously remember I no longer had a pulse.

And that only happened when I looked at Rhys.

I froze, in my thoughts and in my body. I’d never admitted that to myself before.

Crap
.

I couldn’t be…falling in love with him. Could I? He’d taken everything from me. My life. But, he’d been under orders. It wasn’t like he had done it for his own reasons. Really, the general had been the cause of my death. Rhys had never been anything but kind to me.

And I’d never made things easier for him.

I studied his face, resisting the urge to reach out and touch him the way he had touched me in my dream. That would have been a good way to get myself killed. I held my breath so he wouldn’t feel it so close and leaned in just a bit. Maybe if I stared at him long enough I would get the answer I wanted.

His lashes lay lightly against his sun-kissed cheeks, his nose sat perfectly in the middle of his face, and his lips…

“Kassandra.”

I screamed and fell backwards, knocking my tailbone against the floor. “Ow…”

“What are you doing?”

I recovered quickly. “Dammit, Rhys! Don’t scare me like that!” I rubbed at the most recently abused portion of my body.

“Scare you? You were the one creeping so close to a sleeping vampire.”

Crap, double crap. Deny
. “I was not.”

“I smelled you right away.”

“You…smelled…me?” Time for a hole again. I wanted to die. “Oh God,” I moaned, putting my face in my hands and leaning forward until I had folded myself in half over my crossed legs. I couldn’t look at him now.

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t?” He didn’t sound angry. Actually, he didn’t even really sound amused. Not to the point of laughing at me for it. He sounded…casual. That was unexpected.

I didn’t say anything.

“So what were you doing?” he
asked after giving me a moment to continue not answering his previous question.

“Nothing,” I mumbled against my hands and the floor.

“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

I didn’t believe me, either. Yay for us. God, strike me down, please. Find some way to distract him, quick!

I had it. I sat up so quickly I heard my back crack. “What were you doing sleeping in my room all night, huh? Isn’t that a little improper, Mr. Sixteenth Century?” Ha! Take that.

Rhys looked at me like I was stupid, and now I could detect the amusement in his blue eyes. “I came back with blood for you, but you had fallen asleep. And I had every intention of waking you up, making you drink, then leaving, but when I touched you on the shoulder you started mumbling things about wars, your father and mother, and out of control cars. So I opted to let you sleep. When I went to leave the room, you woke up and forbade it.”

I heard my mother’s voice in my head, “Kassandra, close your mouth.” I needed a word stronger than crap. “I—I what?”

He tried not to smile, but failed. “You told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to leave you alone.”

“And you listened to me?” That was really the hardest thing to believe.

He shrugged. “My only other choice was to go back downstairs and help Cade store the boxes and their contents. I figured sitting in your room wouldn’t be so bad.”

“W-Well,” I stuttered, trying to think of something to save myself with. “Well, don’t ever listen to anything I say when I’m asleep! I don’t think clearly.”

“So you’re not scared of Malachi or Tabitha coming back to try something again?”

I didn’t remember saying that. All I remembered was that nice dream in the Irish countryside…“Can I choose not to answer that?”

He set his arm over his knee. “We’re both awake now
. I suppose it no longer matters.”

I leaned forward over my legs. “So what happens now?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you mean?”

“Now that Malachi has thrown the metaphorical gauntlet. What happens?”

“Julius will contact the council, and from there it will be decided if what Malachi did was severe enough to warrant punishment.”

“Death?”

“We hope so, but depending on the opinions of the rest of the council they could only get imprisonment.”

“How do you imprison a vampire?” Unless they were young and stupid like me, vampires could easily bend bars like string cheese and punch through brick or stone walls.

“Don’t ask me that question.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve heard enough for one week.”

He meant his explanation of draining. I knew that. I let it go. He was probably right. I didn’t need to know any more of the details of that side of vampire life right now. Especially if it was completely inhuman.

“Okay. So we wait? That’s it? What if they do come back?”

“They won’t.”

“What if they do?” Always plan for everything. My father made that very clear to me from a young age. Of course, he hadn’t planned for vampires, had he?

“If they do, then we’ll do whatever we have to do to keep the family safe. I already told you, someone will be with you wherever you go from now on.”

“Does that mean you?” I couldn’t quite tell where that hope had come from, but I knew this, I wanted him to be the one to stay with me. Not Millie, not Cade. Rhys.

He dropped his knee to the floor and sat cross-legged like I was. “Most likely, yes.”

I felt a million times better knowing that, and I hadn’t even realized how worried I was about it all until I wasn’t any more. But one thing still bothered me. “If they issue the order for Malachi and Tabitha’s deaths, how will they find them? I mean, they must know they’ve crossed the line, right? Won’t they lay low?”

“Maybe. It depends on exactly what they’re planning. We have ways of finding one another. But as I said, I don’t think they’ll be coming back any time soon.”

“And why is that?”

“Because Julius is inviting Bartolome Cordoba to come stay with us for a while.”

The name made my throat close up. “Who’s that?” I asked once I’d swallowed the lump.

“An old friend of the general’s, and Malachi’s sire.”

“Excuse me, what?”

Rhys sighed. “Julius has known Cordoba for the better part of a thousand years. The man has been both a Conquistador and a High Inquisitor among other things.”

“He doesn’t sound very nice then,” I said.

“Don’t interrupt me.”

“Fine.” I wiggled, getting comfortable and leaning my arms on my knees. “Continue.”

“Malachi was Cordoba’s first initiate. He’s only a hundred years older than I am. When Julius first turned me, Cordoba and Malachi were staying with him, Aurelia
, and Cade, along with Garrett.”

“Which one is that?”

“I thought you weren’t interrupting me?”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I’m trying to keep everything straight here. Is Garrett the redhead or the blond?”

“The blond. Can I continue now?”

“You know, Garrett doesn’t sound like an old enough name for a vampire over five hundred.”

Rhys leaned closer. “It’s a variation of his original name. Satisfied?”

I perked just a bit. “You mean I can change my name in a few centuries if Kassandra goes out of style?”

“It won’t matter if I kill you before then because you insist on being so annoying.”

“Always threatening my life.” I wiped away a fake tear melodramatically. “I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.”

“I’m beginning to think you don’t want to hear this story.”