Heartless (Blue Fire Saga) (12 page)

Tonight, though, she wasn’t worried about Rave showing up. She was worried about the xenorians. When questioning Cali, they had listed vampires among the things they hunted. Leesa did not want to take the chance that one of them might sense Stefan’s presence—for his sake as well as hers.

She grabbed his wrist. “Let’s walk a few blocks away and I’ll tell you all about it. And you can tell me why you’re here in the first place.”

Stefan nodded. “Agreed.”

“I’m coming, too,” Cali said.

Leesa looked at her friend for a moment, unsure if she should expose Cali to any more possible danger. Cali obviously read her look, because she didn’t give Leesa a chance to say anything.

“I’m not letting you walk back alone,” Cali said. “Stefan can’t walk you all the way back, for the same reason we’re leaving now—we need to get him away from the dorm.”

Leesa knew her friend well enough to know it was useless to protest. Besides, Cali was right.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

The three of them fell into step, with Stefan in the middle, and headed back the way Leesa and Cali had just come.

When they had gone three blocks from the dorm, they moved off the sidewalk onto a small, dark, grassy area next to a classroom building, which was locked and empty this time of night. Huddled near the side of the building, they were pretty much invisible from the street and were sheltered from the biting wind as well. Stefan did not care about the cold wind, of course, but he liked the concealment of the shadows.

“So, why did we have to get away from your dorm?” he asked Leesa. “Were you worried there might be volkaanes coming around?”

Leesa knew she had to be careful with her answer—she did not want to give Stefan any hint that the volkaanes’ magical fire had been weakened. If the vampires knew that their long time foes were vulnerable, they might decide to go hunting.

“No, not that,” she said after a moment. “Rave has been gone for more than a week, and I don’t expect him back for a little while yet.”

If Stefan was at all curious about Rave’s absence, he gave no sign of it, for which Leesa was glad.

“What then?” Stefan asked. “If not volkaanes, what should a vampire be concerned about?”

“Have you ever heard of xenorians?”

As usual, Stefan’s black eyes remained expressionless—black mirrors, Leesa usually thought of them as, except when they shifted to bottomless dark pools—but the skin around his mouth and eyes tightened almost imperceptibly.

“I have,” he said. “But what do you know of them?”

“Three of them came to our dorm to talk to me a week or so ago,” Cali said. “We’re afraid they may still be around, or that they might come back.”

Stefan stared at Cali. “Why would xenorians be interested in you? You are a mere human.”

“I know…lucky for me, huh? One of them—a woman—touched me to see if I had any magic. Of course, I don’t.”

Stefan thought for a few seconds and then turned to Leesa. “I’m guessing they must not have talked to you then, right?”

Stefan’s question took Leesa by surprise. She had expected him to ask why the xenorians were there in the first place. She wondered why he would assume they had not spoken to her and worried that perhaps Stefan knew more about her than he had ever let on.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, fighting to keep her tone neutral.

“If the xenorian had touched you like she did Cali, I think she would probably have detected the
grafhym
in you. And if she did, you might not be standing here now.”

Relief flooded though Leesa. She hadn’t even thought about the taint of
grafhym
in her blood—she had far more magic inside her for the xenorians to detect than that small bit. But Stefan clearly did not know that. She didn’t think he would use her secret against her if he ever learned it, but she was glad he did not know.

“I’d forgotten about that—the
grafhym
thing,” she said. “You’re right, though. They haven’t spoken to me—and I guess it’s a good thing, now that you bring it up.”

Stefan turned back to Cali. “So why were they there? And why did they want to talk to you?”

“Three zombies attacked my floor a few weeks ago,” Cali explained. “The agents knew I was fighting one with a fire extinguisher.” She looked at Leesa, silently asking if she could tell Stefan more.

“Go ahead,” Leesa said.

“Rave and two of his friends broke the zombies’ necks,” Cali continued. “They didn’t use any blue fire, so there were no traces of volkaane magic for the xenorians to detect. After the zombies were immobilized, I stabbed one of them in the eyeball with my pen.”

Stefan smiled. “Why am I not surprised? And knowing you, I imagine it was a somewhat distinctive pen—one that the authorities traced back to you.”

Cali grinned. “You got that right. It had some purple fur on it. I didn’t want it back with all that zombie eyeball goo all over it, so I just left it in the thing’s eye.”

Stefan’s eyes moved back to Leesa. “I think this may answer the question that brought me here.”

Leesa looked at Stefan in surprise. “Really?”

“Yes, I believe so. Am I correct in assuming that if Rave has been gone for a while, the rest of the volkaanes have also left the area?”

Leesa hesitated. Once again, she did not want to provide the vampires with any information about the volkaanes that might be used against them.

Stefan recognized her hesitation. “You do not have to answer. I know Rave would never leave you for an extended time like this unless all the volkaanes had departed for some reason. I will not pry about the reason behind their leaving.”

“So, how are the xenorians related to what you wanted to talk to me about?” Leesa asked, happy to move the subject away from Rave and his volkaane brethren.

“I’m looking into the disappearance of one of our coven’s most powerful members—a female named Leah, one of our High Council. I believe she is too wise and experienced to be taken by a volkaane, especially in this perilous time of
Destiratu
, but I wanted to make sure before I started looking for other explanations. I was going to ask you to see if Rave knew anything about it.”

Leesa nodded. What Stefan said made sense.
Destiratu
was a rare phenomenon that affected all things magical. It heightened both the blood thirst of vampires and the killing drive of volkaanes. Consequently, both races took extra precautions whenever
Destiratu
arose. Thankfully, it occurred less than once every hundred years.

“You’re thinking the xenorians may have killed Leah?” she asked.

“That now seems to be the most likely possibility, yes.”

“Can they really kill a vampire?” Cali asked. “They didn’t seem all that powerful to me. Scary, yeah…but they don’t seem nearly as dangerous as you—no offense.”

Stefan grinned. “None taken.” His expression turned serious once again. “The xenorians usually work behind the scenes, getting others to do their bidding, but it is rumored that some of them have secret abilities. I think three of them could have destroyed even a vampire as powerful as Leah, especially if they took her by surprise.”

Leesa was not all that upset to hear there was one less vampire around, given all the trouble the creatures had caused her family, but the fact that the xenorians could kill a vampire as powerful as Leah made her worry about Rave. For the first time, she found herself hoping he would remain away a while longer.

“I must go now,” Stefan said. “I need to let my coven know about this development. Thank you both for your openness.” Without waiting for any reply, he turned and quickly vanished into the night, the way only a vampire could.

Leesa and Cali looked at each other.

“I guess those xenorians are more dangerous than they seemed,” Cali said.

Leesa frowned. “Yeah…I know. And that worries me more than I want to say.”

16. REUNION

T
he next two days passed in a bit of a blur for Leesa. Thursday she had her two exams, which she did okay, but not great on. Stefan’s visit had kept her up later than she had planned, making her a bit tired and sluggish during the first test, especially. She had crashed early that night and slept in late on Friday, but one night of extra sleep was not enough to offset a whole week of stress and studying.

Cali was out celebrating the end of midterms with Andy, so Leesa was just spending the evening hanging out alone in her room, reading and watching television. She thought about going to the library to practice her magic, but even the four block walk seemed like too much effort tonight. She didn’t think one more day without practice was going to hurt her meager progress.

She was watching a rerun of Two and a Half Men—one of the good ones before Charlie Sheen experienced his epic meltdown—when someone knocked at her door. Pushing herself up off the bed, she dragged herself across the room and pulled the door open.

All her exhaustion vanished when she saw Rave standing outside her door. A big smile lit up his handsome face.

She had almost forgotten how amazingly gorgeous he was. For a moment, she just stood there gaping at him, torn between remaining where she was and drinking in his beauty or throwing herself into his muscular arms. Eventually, his arms won and she leaped upon him, throwing her arms around the back of his neck and wrapping her legs around his waist. She hung there like a vine clinging to the trunk of a tree.

Rave caught her effortlessly, supporting her weight with his hands cupped under her butt. She squeezed him tightly, burying her face against his neck and inhaling deeply of his musky, masculine scent. Finally, she pulled her head back and looked up into his beautiful brown eyes.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Rave feigned a pout. “
That’s
how you greet me after all this time? ‘What am I doing here?’”

Leesa grinned. “You know what I mean. Besides, doesn’t the way I’m clinging to you like a drowning woman grabbing onto a life preserver tell you how much I’ve missed you?”

Rave returned her grin. “Yeah, it does.” He slid one hand up her back and pressed her even more tightly against him. “It feels great, too.”

Leesa laughed. “I’m glad you think so, because I don’t plan on coming down from here anytime soon. So you may as well carry me into the room and push the door closed behind us.”

Rave stepped into the room and shoved the door shut with his heel. He crossed to the middle of the room and stopped. Leesa still clung to him tightly, her lips once again pressed against the smooth bronze skin of his neck. Snuggled against him like this, it was difficult for her to tell where she left off and where he began. Their bodies and souls seemed to have merged into one being, cocooned in warmth and love.

God, how she had missed him!

Rave held her weight with as little effort as if she had been a balloon filled with air. She thought she could remain wrapped around him like this—feeling the hardness of his body and breathing in his scent—for a year or two, if not more. She was pretty sure that wasn’t feasible, though—she would need to eat sometime, right? Maybe she would just stay here for the next couple of hours. When she got hungry, she would reevaluate the matter. She smiled into his neck at the thought.

As wonderful as this was, what she really wanted to do was tumble onto the bed with him and touch his sculptured body the way she had touched it in her dream; and to have him do the exquisitely delightful things to her that he had done in the same dream…but there were things she needed to talk to him about.

Reluctantly, she pulled her head back from his neck and looked into his face. He greeted her with a smile so full of love that she was certain the warm feeling she felt surging through her body was her heart melting inside her chest. She risked a quick peck on his lips and then sighed. It was all she could do to keep from returning her lips to his neck and sinking into him once again.

“Have you practiced your magic today?” Rave asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

Leesa’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. She wondered why he was asking about her magic right now.

“No, I haven’t. Why do you ask?”

Rave smiled again and his eyes seemed to twinkle. “Because if you had, you would know the answer to the question you asked me a few minutes ago.”

Leesa’s frown deepened. She tried to remember what she had asked him, but the excitement of having him here and the closeness of their bodies seemed to have turned her brain to mush.

“What question?” she asked finally.

Rave’s smile widened as he shook his head in mock exasperation. “The one about what I’m doing here.”

Now Leesa remembered. It hadn’t really been a question, though—just a knee-jerk reaction to the surprise of seeing him standing in her doorway.

“Okay. Hold on a minute. Let me think.”

Leesa forced herself to concentrate. She had stupidly asked him what he was doing here, and now he had just said that practicing her magic would have answered that question. She pursed her lips in thought, trying to figure out how the two could be related. Rave had been gone because his whole clan had departed from the area. They’d left because their magical fire had been diminished by the same strange spell that had weakened her own magic. So what was the connection?

Suddenly, the pieces fell into place. If Rave was here, then perhaps all the volkaanes had returned. They would only have come home if their magic had returned to its normal strength. And if their magic was back, then hers should be, too. That’s why he had asked about whether she had tried any magic today. If she had, she would have known her magic had been restored.

“Your magic is back!” she said excitedly, squeezing her arms even tighter around his neck.

“Yes, it is. Our fire returned to full strength early this morning. As soon as it did, my people all headed back for our settlement. I raced here.”

Rave pulled one hand from underneath Leesa and held it out where she could see it. He supported her weight with his remaining hand just as effortlessly as he had with two. He spread the fingers of his free hand.