Fate Forsaken (7 page)

Chapter Seven

E
ldon shifted in the uncomfortable seat, trying to regain feeling in his ass. They’d changed planes in Houston before heading to Paris, and nearly fifteen hours later, they were less than an hour away from their final destination.

Which couldn’t come sooner, really. His brain was numb, but he couldn’t sleep because he was too paranoid. He could call on his father’s spell quickly now that he’d pulled off the first cast, and he didn’t want her caught in the daylight. Especially around all of these humans.

The moment the sun had risen in the sky, he’d taken Rho’s hand and held on as if his life depended on it. And in a way, it did. She’d become the center of his universe, the axis around which his world turned. Nothing could happen to her on his watch. He simply couldn’t exist without her.

Rho had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and short of straight-up drooling on him, she was out so hard he hoped he wouldn’t have to pull another snatch-and-drag just to get her up again. People disapproved of that kind of thing on airplanes.

He laid a kiss on the top of her head before settling back in the chair and adjusting his headphones. Someone to the right of him reoccupied the seat as he tried to fiddle with the television screen in the headrest. Damn things never worked properly. The captain had already reset it three times.

He flicked through the television options, not wanting to get too invested in a full-length movie with only one hour to go.

The Big Bang Theory
. Perfect.

He pressed another button and waited for the show to load.

“Eldon?”

His snapped his head up at the sound of his muffled name. He pulled his headphones off and glanced around. No one should be on this flight but him and Rho. Everyone else was already—

The man sitting in the seat across the aisle was tall and thin. His hair was cut short, his thin beard and mustache trimmed neatly. He wore a scarf, a button-down shirt, and nice dress slacks, somehow too trendy to be an American. Yet he seemed familiar.

“Don’t tell me you have forgotten your dear friend,” the stranger said, his French accent thick.

Eldon stared closer at the man sitting across the aisle. Then it hit him. “Lukas?”

The man smiled. “But of course! Who else did you think me to be?”

Eldon’s lips curved into a smile as he gave his old friend a closer look and shook his head. “Sorry, it’s the beard. Awesome to see you, my man.” With a firm grip, he shook Lukas’s hand without letting go of his hold on Rho. “Why are you here?”

They’d planned to meet Lukas and Evette in the parking area. He couldn’t imagine why he would have bothered to meet them on the plane. How long had he been here?

Lukas leaned across the aisle and dropped his voice into a low whisper. “We’ve had a change of plans.”

Eldon pressed his elbow into the plastic armrest and craned to his right. “Why didn’t you just call?”

“I didn’t know until just before your flight was to leave Houston.”

Eldon scoped out the seats around him before speaking. “Did you
jump
here?” He couldn’t imagine how he’d get on the plane while it was moving so quickly through the air. Jumping onto a moving target was rarely successful and highly stupid.

“Of course,” Lukas said.

“While we were
moving
?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lukas shook his head. “It’s stupid to jump to a moving target. You know this.”

“How’d you get here then?”

“I jumped to Houston and walked on board the aircraft, as the humans do.”

He’d been on this flight the entire time? “Why didn’t you come see me earlier?” It would’ve been nice to see him sooner than an hour before landing.

Lukas waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t want to trouble your voyage, as there is nothing to do until you arrive.”

“You could have troubled me—”

“We are no longer taking you to the loft.”

“What?” Eldon always stayed at the loft when he came to visit. Unless they’d expanded their home, which wasn’t likely given the price and limitations of French real estate.

Lukas’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not safe there.”

Oh, God. “Is Evette okay?” Guilt shot through his head. Could his correspondence with her actually put her in the line of danger? He hadn’t even considered it a possibility.

“She’s fine.” Lukas lifted a hand, as if the motion could stop Eldon’s concern. “But she, too, shall be hiding away with us.”

Who said anything about hiding? “Wait, where are Tim and Preshea?” He’d only dropped them off the night before. They couldn’t have gotten into trouble that quickly.

Well, they could have. He just hoped they hadn’t.

“They are in our other home, the one we have retained for many years. It is listed under a human name, so the Collective cannot trace us there.”

“Since when is the Collective tracing anybody?” Unease started to crawl along Eldon’s subconscious and the wheels in his brain began to turn. He’d talked to Evette last night and she’d sounded fine. Not bothered in the least. Which could only mean something had happened. Between last night and this moment, something had changed.

Lukas’s voice was so low, Eldon could barely hear it over the roar of the plane engines. “Evette and I have reason to believe the Collective has been compromised.”

“How so?” Lukas and his wife weren’t members. They shouldn’t know anything, especially regarding the internal workings of the magick mover’s most powerful organization.

“For the past several months, we have noticed funds missing from
Magie de Paris.
” Lukas spoke quickly. “You may know Evette and I are teachers there now, yes?”

“I had no idea.” Eldon shook his head. “Congrats, professor.”

Lukas grinned. “Thank you very much. It’s exciting for us to teach again.”

“That always was your gift.” Beyond their countless magickal skills, both Lukas and Evette had the extraordinary gift of patience. They’d made excellent tutors when Eldon had been in school. Most of his passing grades were attributed to their hours of help.

Just another reason he owed them. Man, he was going to have to come up with a badass Christmas present this year.

“But the funds,” Lukas interrupted his train of thought. “They’re disappearing and we cannot find the leak. We have brought this information to the school leadership many times, yet they do nothing.”

Eldon frowned. “No one has investigated?” Missing school funds were serious business. Magick wasn’t easy to supplement. The ingredients they required for spells and potions were expensive and rare, and the children needed to be trained with proper materials.

“We did have an investigation once, when it first started. Max said they’d found the problem, but still the money is disappearing.”

“Max knows about this?” Eldon knew Max fairly well via business, but he wouldn’t quite consider the man a friend. He’d been Cadence’s assistant for years, and he represented the western European region for decades.

“Yes. He says it’s being handled.” Lukas sat back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. “We’ll have to begin eliminating educators in the fall if we cannot find the solution.”

“The Collective has always put education first.”

“That’s exactly why we cannot understand their lack of urgency.”

Still, they shouldn’t need to abandon their home just for some missing funds. “I’m missing something here. Why would you feel like you have to leave your house?”

Lukas’s brows knotted as his jaw clenched. “Last night Evette discovered her ward had been broken. From the outside in.”

“Someone tried to get in your house?”

“Someone
did
get in.” Lukas glanced over his left shoulder and met Eldon’s stare. “We took your friends for a true Parisian meal, and when we returned, the house was trashed.”

Damn it. “What happened? Evette makes stronger wards than anyone I know.” When they’d been in school together, no one could break her magickal protection structures. They’d made games out of trying to best her—she’d been practically impenetrable.

“Not stronger than someone out there. The house was tossed.”

“You know what they were looking for?” Eldon asked.

Lukas and Evette were by no means poor, but they weren’t extravagant, either. There would be little other than jewelry to steal from a home like theirs. No valuable magick materials either, since those were kept under lock and key at the school.

Lukas lifted a shoulder. “Nothing seemed to be taken.”

“None of this makes sense.” He’d only told Cadence where he’d gone. It was possible Max could have figured out where they were going because of his position as Cadence’s assistant, but it wasn’t likely. What did he stand to benefit by hurting Eldon’s friends? And why would anyone go after Evette and Lukas in particular? It had been years since the last time he’d visited Paris.

“We made a judgment call,” Lukas said. “The Collective knows of our loft, so we removed your friends just in case. They are with Evette at our other home now.”

Eldon blew out a sigh of relief. “Thanks for taking care of them.”

“That’s what friends do.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment before Eldon broke the silence. “So I take it you’re here to take me to your other home?”

“Yes. And because of this incident, no one is to travel alone. It’s unsafe.”

Eldon gripped Rho’s hand a little tighter. She still hadn’t budged, which wasn’t a surprise. Usually her keen hearing could register the pattering of a heartbeat, but not when she slept. Right now her mind was far away, and he’d have to work just to bring her back into consciousness.

Eldon turned back to Lukas. “She’s not allowed to travel alone anyway.”

With calculating eyes, Lukas studied the air around Rho then scowled. “The aura is dark around her.”

“She has a death mark.”

Lukas inhaled sharply. “Why? Who’s done this to her?”

“They did it to me, actually. And while I was unconscious, she asked Jess to transfer the mark to her instead.” The sharp spear of fresh guilt pierced his gut as he spoke those words. She’d taken on his burden like the warrior she was, and he still couldn’t believe she’d done it. But that was who she was. Brave, beautiful, and brazen to a fault. Exactly why he loved her. But he’d never be able to rest until he knew that spell was lifted.

“Your sister would actually transfer the mark to another?” Lukas’s tone gave away his surprise.

“Would you do it for Evette?”

Lukas pursed his lips then nodded.

“I’m not happy about it, either.” Eldon gave Rho a quick once-over. “But she’s a vampire. She’s handling it better than I did.”

“Have you been watching her?”

“Like a hawk.”

“Good.” Lukas nodded his approval. “She needs to be monitored. Have you considered taking her to a magickal specialist?”

“I was hoping to see Trinador while I was in town.”

Lukas stiffened. “That may not be the best idea.”

Yeah, he’d thought the same thing himself. Damn Nick and his ideas. But Nick was right. Trinador could be their only hope. “She may be able to help.”

“And she may be eager to…
see
you.”

“Knock it off.” Eldon shot a quick glance at Rho before pinning Lukas with a hard stare. She didn’t need to be troubled with his past rendezvous. Especially when his relationship with Trinador was long over, and Rho had a death mark to worry about.

A clucking sound came from Lukas. “You play with fire.”

Eldon lowered his voice. “That relationship is over. The bridge burned a long time ago.”

“Bridges can be repaired.”

“Not that one.”

“Are you so swift to turn away from one of your own kind?”

And there it was. The one thing Rho’d worried the most about from the beginning of their relationship. The one thing he knew she
still
worried about.

“Race is irrelevant,” Eldon said.

Lukas arched a brow. “Race is
very
relevant. You know this as well as I.”

“I’ve moved on. Trinador has, too.”

“Are you sure about that?” A grin smeared across Lukas’s smug face as he settled back into his chair.

The captain chose that moment to interrupt their conversations with several long announcements about their descent then turned on the fasten seatbelt sign with a loud
ding
. They were only a few minutes away from landing.

Eldon swallowed. No, he wasn’t sure about where he stood with Trinador at all. To him, the relationship had ended the day he’d left Paris. She’d been a big part of his life at one time, and he hadn’t seen her in three years. He’d avoided her on purpose.

A very talented emulator and healer, she was an undoubtedly attractive woman. Back then, he couldn’t trust himself to be around her. She’d always had some sort of hold on him, captivating him with her presence. They weren’t right for each other, no matter how strong his attraction to her, but it had taken him entirely too long to figure that out.

He glanced at Rho, still asleep on his shoulder. Her mouth was parted, and although she didn’t breath, he knew she was alive. Her eyes always moved when she slept—when she dreamed.

The Big Bang Theory
played on the screen in front of him, the action rolling silently since he wasn’t wearing his headphones.

His relationship with this vampire was nothing like what he’d had with Trinador. Rho was fire and fury and passion, all wrapped in a deceitfully hard package. Trinador had just been soft. Sweet.

Rho stirred against his shoulder, and he kissed her on the forehead. Then he squeezed her hand as hard as he could. “Time to wake up, angel.”

“Ouch!” She tried to pull her hand away but he held her tight.

“Sorry, love. I had to get you up somehow.”

“I’m so tired,” she whined as she rubbed her eyes.

“You slept most of the trip.”

“Still.” Her voice was groggy. “Sun’s up. I wanna be down.”

“Not going to happen.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

“What?” Rho blinked her eyes furiously, as if someone had busted the door open and she’d been caught off guard.

Eldon leaned back in his chair so she could have better sight of Lukas. “Rho, this is my friend Lukas. I didn’t know he’d join us on the flight.” He glanced at Lukas. “Lukas, this is Rho, my…girlfriend.”

Rho’s brows shot up.

Lukas rose from his chair and bent forward to lay a kiss on her hand. “Pleasure is mine, mademoiselle.”