Prince of Power (16 page)

Xander floated a short distance from the fray. Or what had been the fray only moments ago. What remained were a couple of sad, disgusting excuses for defenders of their race. And then there was Anton, looking very much like his soul had been ripped out. Though Xander's own arms remained held by Flay and Siddoh, it was unnecessary. Xander could do nothing but stare at the broken wizard, while the
glub, glub, glub
of Xander's own heart floundered in his ears.

He closed his eyes and was immediately sucked back into his skin.
Well. How disappointing
.

Tam's death was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. The moment she was gone, her death had resonated to his very core. Her life force, the invisible heart that had always beat so swiftly alongside his own, was gone. Just gone. And in its place, to this day, was a gaping, open void that nothing in the world could ever fill.

He carried the ache every day, the burn and strain of a supernaturally powerful heart that insisted on beating continuously despite the fact that Xander would have much preferred for it not to. It still seemed so improbable that he could haul around two hundred pounds of muscle and bone and somehow get from point A to point B for as long as he did without just collapsing into the dust. There was, after all, nothing that made him want to go on. Nothing that made him feel peace.

Nothing that ever would.

Not even killing the wizard in front of him who had seen her die.

Who had… Xander's eyes burned as he stared at the wizard named Anton. Who had tried, it would seem, to do Xander a kindness of sorts by letting him know that Tam had not suffered. At least not as much as she might have. It wasn't much, but it was something.

There were questions, clearly, about the wizard's allegiance. Of course there would be. One didn't just waltz in off the street claiming to be a defected wizard, and frankly, Thad had given the man liberties that surprised Xander. Still, there were questions. Rumors that he'd orchestrated a fight that occurred downtown earlier. That he'd made it possible for Tyra to be taken. There were a lot of problems here.

But looking at Anton now, Xander was fairly sure this guy was no traitor. Not to the vampires, anyway. Not to Tyra. Not judging by the look on this guy's face.

Xander approached Flay and Siddoh, and brought a hand to each of Anton's shoulders, pushing at the grip of his superior officers. “I won't hurt him. You can let go.” The resistance with which the two older males complied was understandable, but he spoke the truth.

Remarkably, for the first time since Tam's death—even after all these months of guarding Theresa and now her baby—Xander was looking into a mirror. A man who was gripped by a torture worse than death and yet somehow remained standing.

Xander offered his palm, which Anton stared at in confusion with his brow creased, as if Xander had asked him to solve a riddle.

“Come on.” He jerked his head in the direction Tyra had run. “Let's get a move on. I still hear her going through the woods.”

Anton cleared his throat. “It's disgusting, you know. I never wanted to be a part of… any of it.”

“I know.” And Xander did know. He wouldn't have claimed to even five minutes before. But the total devastation on Anton's face when he'd realized that Tyra was lost to him forever? Every light had gone out in that male's soul. And she
would
be gone now. Anyone could see that. It was enough to make Xander believe the conviction of the wizard's words. “But seriously, we have to get moving. She's a danger to herself, and she's not thinking clearly or she would've teleported somewhere by now.”

He inclined his head toward Flay and Siddoh. “You guys should report in with Thad. She's pissed off, and we don't know what Dr. Evil said to her, but we know it couldn't have been good. You should at least prepare him for bad news.”

Flay jabbed an accusatory finger. “Don't kill him.”

Anton had managed to find his get-up-and-go, and Xander followed after flipping Flay the one-finger salute.
Jeez
. Flay and Siddoh tossed dubious glares over their shoulders before speeding off into the woods in the other direction.

Truly, though, as Xander thought about it, he couldn't imagine what being born on the other side of that fence would be like. They had always assumed that the wizards were all just… soulless. That they killed because they liked to kill. They wanted to claim vampire powers for the sake of having power, and that was that.

This one clearly hadn't wanted to but hadn't had a choice. Had been forced to kill vampires who had done nothing wrong because it was either that or be killed himself. Xander could not forgive necessarily, but he could appreciate on some level that the man had lived in his own kind of hell.

The sound of arguing and a scuffle made Xander pick up speed, but when he reached the source, he found Anton on his ass in the middle of a frozen patch of ground. “She's not interested in discussing things further,” Anton said. “You want to go ahead and beat the shit out of me some more while I'm down here?”

Xander rolled his neck and looked down at the wizard, who was still bruised and a little bloody, though already showing signs of healing. Interesting.

Xander punched Anton on the arm but then helped pull him to standing. “Don't tell me you're going to let her just push you around like that. Come on, we've stayed here far too long. God knows what your leader has planned. And now that you've given me permission to give you a beat-down, it's taken all the fun out of it for me.”

***

Lord knew how long she had crashed through the woods before Anton had caught up with her and she realized she was being a total idiot. She was visible. She was making too much noise. She was on foot when she should have teleported. What she was
not
doing was thinking clearly.

“Okay, Ty, get a grip on yourself here.” She stopped against a storm-damaged evergreen. A broken branch jabbed into her back and gave her a refreshing wake-up call while she got her bearings. This thing with Anton? No, she couldn't get her head around that just yet. She was too… God, she just couldn't think when it came to him. Cold ice filled her chest. Panic and fear and a whole lot of oh-what-the-fuck-have-I-done? Because how stupid—stupid and disgustingly naive—she had been to let him into the estate, to let him near her brother. Into her bed, into her heart.

And this thing with his father… That would be a
hell
no. She had accepted her human side a long time ago, and because she was stronger than most vampires, she'd managed to make peace with it.

Because she was more powerful than most vampires. In more than a hundred years, nobody ever thought that was odd. “Oh my God, why didn't I realize?” So few of their kind bred with humans, but the ones who did usually produced physically weaker offspring. It was a big reason for that whole “human-vampire interaction” law that the Elders' Council had brought to the table recently. It had been so easy for her to ignore the obvious.

Tree bark scattered by her head. Someone was shooting at her. She crouched low behind the tree and pulled out her gun.

“Tyra.”

Anton.
What the hell was he doing? That idiot was going to get himself killed running through the woods calling to her like that. And just as quickly as they'd started, the sounds of him running stopped. Shit, what had happened?

Was he okay?

How badly she wanted him to be all right almost knocked her over. She slithered along the ground in the direction she'd heard his voice come from. Fiery pain bit her in the shoulder, but she ignored it as best she could and pushed forward. She'd fed not too long ago; her body could handle it just fine.

Sure enough, even as Tyra rolled to return fire, her body's superior healing properties started to expel the metal from her body. Key word: started. “Damn,” she muttered. She didn't have time for this. Fingernails dug and pulled. Her fangs sank into her lips and she tasted her own blood, but it was far better than crying out against the pain.

Something moved in the trees. A slow, tentative sweep of pine needles from across the way, like someone pushed a branch aside. Was that where Anton had been shouting from? Shit, she couldn't tell what was what. Her night vision wasn't as sharp as a pure-blooded vampire's, and everything was just far enough into the shadows that she couldn't see clearly. She could throw a fireball to light things up, but what if she aimed wrong and hit Anton?

“Dammit, Tyra, this is ridiculous,” she muttered. “You never had this kind of trouble fighting alongside Siddoh all those years.”

Okay, slow it down. You're overthinking everything.

A twig snapped ahead and to her right. Then, silence closed in from all other angles. She took a chance and scooted back under the cover of an evergreen. Her hand warmed, and she focused her energy on charging the fireball that gathered there. She waited. She sure as hell hoped that Anton was all right, and that if he was, he was smart enough to stay put. Because the first thing that came out of those trees was going to burn.

She was seated comfortably, and the flame she cradled in her hand was fairly small. Her heart was hammering a mile a minute, but that was another story altogether. In theory, she could wait this out for a while. She tried to get Zen about it, like Lee had taught her years ago, and focused on the in and out of her breath, the movement of her abdomen, and the flicker of the fire in her hand. But she kept looking through the trees for Anton.

Maybe she was still afraid to trust him, but she wanted him to be okay. She cared for him. Deeply. But she had spoken an important truth that first night when they had come looking for his father together.
She
couldn't afford to be wrong
. And now, knowing that they came from the same blood, so to speak? It changed everything.

A rustle and snap came from across the way. Footsteps approached. Tyra took aim and let her fireball fly.

Anton jerked when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Another hand held a jacket in front of him.

“Here,” Xander whispered. “You left it. Back there. You should put it on.”

Anton glanced over his shoulder. “I did?”

The vampire—Xander—crouched and met him eye to eye. Why was he on his knees here in the dirt? Why was it difficult to breathe? Anton had a moment of flashback to the morning when he'd woken in woods just like these after his father had tried to kill him. For all he knew, it had been these very woods. Then it had hurt to breathe because of injury. Because of bloody gashes and a punctured lung and fuck knew what else.

Now?

Tyra had shoved him away when he'd tried to explain. Twice. And now she was under attack, and this Xander had just stopped Anton from going after her because of his fucking jacket?

But light exploded from nearby and Xander pulled on Anton's arm. “Looks like she's hit one. Come on.”

Of course she had. After all, she was powerful, a perfectly competent fighter. She didn't need Anton to defend her. They'd been clear on that, hadn't they? Added to that, what little trust she'd had in him had been shattered the moment she realized what he'd been keeping from her. That he'd already known she was part wizard. Not that she'd stopped to ask how he knew. Not that he'd said.

How should that have gone down, exactly? Would it have been better to blurt it out, right there in front of her fellow vampires, one of whom she'd been previously intimate with?
No, you see, baby, I really have cared for you all along. I didn't realize you had wizard blood until I saw the birthmark on your naked body after we did it. You know, after I drank your blood and stuff? Boy, that was surprisingly hot. But I guess you're not gonna let me do that again, on account of now you think I want to cut your chest open and eat your heart. I have to tell you that is the most disgusting thing I've ever done. Thanks a fucking lot.

He guessed he couldn't blame her.

Maybe it was foolish to think they'd connected back there when they made love. Maybe… was sex always like that? He guessed he needed to be with another female to make a true comparison.

He'd rather eat a vampire heart.

Wind blew. A tree branch slapped him in the face, and he laughed at the ridiculous direction of his thoughts. Once the sound bubbled up and out of his mouth, it gained in speed and volume, and the release was amazing, not unlike the killer orgasm he'd had when he'd made love to Tyra. Not quite as satisfying but almost as necessary. The anger and frustration and all that sheer cluelessness over which way to turn next.

He had to get it out.

A hand landed over his mouth. “Buddy.”

Anton laughed more. His breath clouded around the fingers covering his mouth.

Someone shook his shoulder. “Buddy.”

Anton coughed and sobered up. They'd come out just to the right of a tree behind where Tyra was fighting a wizard. His pulse spiked, but then he realized that one already lay dead on the ground and the other was probably not long for this world. She'd just kicked him against a tree and set him aflame. That fire thing of hers was a cool power, no question. His heat power didn't seem to work like that.

Look
at
her.
No, Tyra really hadn't needed either of them to help. Meanwhile here was Anton, laughing in the woods like a lunatic when everything was going to shit around them. No wonder she didn't want him.

“So, this is what it looks like from the outside, huh?”

“What?”

Xander's smile was genuine but sad at the same time. Anton noticed that he had long, very sharp fangs. Tyra's were less prominent, more blunt in appearance unless extended for feeding. Maybe because she wasn't a full-blooded vampire? He flinched when across the way Tyra shoved the wizard's head against a tree trunk. Anton hated to even think about it.

“It's the crazies, ya know?” The vampire scratched the back of his neck and shifted uncomfortably. “When I lost my Tam, I felt it in here.” He thumped his chest with a fat thumb. Anton glanced back at Tyra when Xander's eyes got watery. “And you know, for a long time I was off the deep end. But that part at the beginning, it's the worst. When you're denying and then you're flipping out and then…” Alexander met Anton's stare. Strong enough, apparently, to face him even with a drop of moisture sliding out of one eye. “And then you think maybe you're gonna just die right then and there because you don't have the other half of your heart anymore.”

Anton's gut burned and twisted. He wanted to curl into a ball like one of those stupid pill bugs some of the other wizards used to take matches to when they were children. Wait until the world and everything awful went away. Tears stung behind his own eyes, but out here in the woods with enemies attacking was not the time for some kind of manly pity fest. “I'm sorry. I swear. If I had been able to save her—”

“No.” Xander grabbed Anton's arm as if he, too, had reached the conclusion that it was time for them to move. “I know. Look.” Xander pointed to where Tyra had the wizard facing a tree, with a knife out ready to land the deathblow. “Tyra's still alive, okay? I just think you need to keep sight of that.” Xander swallowed hard and pressed the again-forgotten jacket into Anton's hands. Funny, it wasn't until Anton put the thing on that he really felt the cold.

“I know.”

“Of course you do.” Xander clapped him on the back, then jabbed him hard with a finger to the chest. “So you don't waste that, you know? I saw you give up back there, and what I'm trying to tell you, my friend, is as long as that heart of hers is still beating inside her chest, you don't fucking waste that.”

Anton sucked in a deep breath. Xander was absolutely right. He needed to find a way to make things right with Tyra, and he needed to prove himself. A few feet away, she dropped the body to the ground and turned to him. She smiled.
Actually
smiled.

Anton smiled back. His chest flew wide open and all the fear escaped, thanks to the way she looked at him then. He wasn't sure what had changed her mind, but he could believe that everything was all right when she smiled at him that way.

He had just taken a step toward her when a sphere of light blasted through the trees and hit Xander in the back of the head.

***

“That face of yours is pissing me off, rabbit.”

Thad squinted in the dimly lit kitchen and growled at the goofy, cheerful countenance of a cartoon bunny on the container of strawberry powder in his hand. Isabel was supposed to have gone to bed early, but forty goddamned minutes later she'd woken up to go to the bathroom and decided she needed strawberry milk to get back to sleep.

Of course she did.

He leaned against the granite countertop. “Baby's as big as a key lime. Already she's peeing like it was one of her new assigned duties as queen,” he said to the rabbit's silly grin. “Soon we'll need to move a mattress into the bathroom.”

He dug for a long iced-tea spoon in one of the drawers. “Sister's missing. Another Elder Council meeting is in a few days. No speech prepared for that. Busy making flavored milk. Fucking first-world vampire problems.” An open honey-maple cabinet of glasses gave him pause.

“Something wrong, buddy?”

Thad threw a look over his shoulder at Siddoh and Flay standing in the doorway to the hall before returning to the issue at hand. “If I get too small of a glass and she's still thirsty, she'll send me back for more. Too big, and she'll be up another ten times during the day.”

Siddoh grinned. “Either way you don't sleep.”

Thad dropped his chin to his chest. He sighed and grabbed a stray Redskins souvenir cup someone had shoved alongside the drinking glasses and filled it with milk. “This way I get points for effort, and maybe if I'm lucky she won't wake me up the next time she has to go to the bathroom.” He sat at the kitchen's small bistro table with the long spoon and the strawberry powder. “So what's up, guys?”

Siddoh looked impossibly large when he perched on one of the bistro chairs. Thad didn't look that ridiculous when he sat on those things, did he? They needed to rethink the furniture in here, too. “Things went nuts out in the woods. Good news is, Tyra's okay. Wizards had her, but they let her go.”

Thad let go of the spoon. It kept spinning on its own in the glass, carried around in circles by the force of the milk. Relief took the tension out of his body, but it rebounded again when he weighed Siddoh's words. “What do you mean ‘let her go'? They don't do that.” He looked from Siddoh to Flay. The blond-haired vampire nodded confirmation.

“We don't know exactly what went down except that he dropped the bomb about her wizard blood, and she went off half-cocked when she realized she was the last to know.”

“And that her wizard friend had stolen some vampire powers,” Flay interjected.

Thad cursed. And cursed some more when he slid off the seat and milk sloshed onto his hand from the overfull cup. “Okay, so what are you two clowns doing back here?”

Siddoh pushed back his chair as well. “Xander and Anton are cleaning things up with Ty. We wanted to fill you in.”

Thad sipped the milk. Tasted okay. Fingers crossed, he rinsed the spoon and put it in the dish drainer by the sink. “All right. Listen—” From the corner of his eye, he caught Flay's tired lean in the doorway. “Flay, report in at the barracks, would you? I need to have a talk with Siddoh.”

Cup in hand, Thad stepped close to Siddoh once they were alone. The estate was mostly dead at this time of day, but it paid to be sure nobody would overhear. “How much do you know about Lee's history? The way-back stuff, I mean.” Siddoh, at almost four hundred years old, was the closest in age to Lee of Thad's inner circle.

Siddoh rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Aside from the shit with Agnessa, not a whole lot. Parents both died early, mother in birth or soon after, as I understand it. Father…” Siddoh frowned thoughtfully. “He came over from the mountain areas when your father did, I think. I've gleaned they didn't have a good relationship, mostly because Lee won't talk about him. Then again, Lee doesn't talk about much of anything.” He glanced over his shoulder and moved even closer to Thad in the kitchen. “What's this about?”

I
wish
I
knew.
“Maybe nothing.” Thad shook his head. “Council elders wanted to reopen the issue on human interaction. And they want to lower the soldier retirement age to eight hundred. Lee didn't take it so well.”

As if on cue, there were footsteps in the hall. Ivy, his house manager, headed toward them with her long, dark hair pulled up in a ponytail. She was too busy sorting a stack of mail to notice them.

Thad jerked his head. “It was Ivy's father who was so hell-bent.”

Siddoh stepped back, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Honestly? It could be nothing. It could be as simple as he doesn't want to have to retire in a hundred years, 'cuz hell, I'd like to think I'll still be in prime fighting shape when I'm that age, too. Realistically? Lee's a little cagey, and he can be wound pretty tight. They do some sort of a background check or something before induction, right? Maybe something he doesn't want found.”

Thad took another sip of strawberry milk, and his stomach turned. “That's what I was wondering.”

“Dunno, man. This sort of thing is why I'm glad not to be in your shoes. Listen, you're in charge, though. You can smack this shit down, right? Or maybe compromise. Give a little on the human interaction stuff in exchange for the other thing.”

Thad had already given serious consideration to that option. His primary resistance to the human-vampire interaction bill had been that it would make the existence of half-human vampires illegal. It would have affected his own sister. Only now, it didn't affect her, did it? Still, it was a slippery slope. If they started regulating these things by law, where did it end?

“I'd better get Isabel her milk,” he said.

Siddoh nodded and took another step toward the door, stroking his chin. “Look. No love lost between me and Lee, you know that. But the way I figure it? He's always been a good fighter. He's always been loyal. Some things are better left buried.”