Prophecy: Caelestis & Aurorea (24 page)

She heard Venturi move and breathed in sharply when he placed his hand lightly on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. She resisted the temptation he offered her. She would find no real comfort in his arms and it would only make things between them worse.

“This is the nature of warfare,” he said in a low soothing voice. “People will die, Prophecy, but they die for their cause and it is their choice to make. You cannot save everyone. You must look to the greater good.”

When he touched her cheek, wiping away the tears, she turned away from him and walked to the other side of the room.

She wrapped her arms about herself and sighed.

“He’s been through so much, Venturi.” She looked at him briefly and then stared at the window. “He stood by me at a time when everyone was against me. I’ve got him hurt so many times. He was so hurt. It took so much for me to heal him and now this. Physical pain is replaced by emotional and I can’t fix that.”

She could feel Venturi watching her and she wished he would speak. She knew it hurt him to hear her innermost thoughts and feelings about Valentine, but she needed to speak to someone.

“Time will heal all of our wounds. Valentine will learn to live with what has happened,” he said.

She lowered her head again and her eyes traced the patterns in the rug. “I’m sorry about your sire.”

“It is in the past and nothing can be done to change it.”

Moving across the room, she briefly hugged him and then went past him to the corridor between the lounge and the kitchen. She didn’t want to look at him. If she didn’t, then she wouldn’t see the false hope she’d just re-ignited in his eyes.

She ran her fingers over the wooden panelling and thought about what she’d done. She frowned when she felt a bump and traced her fingers over it. It felt like an edge. Running her hands out in different directions, she followed the line of it. It was a door. She stepped back and looked at it, searching for a handle or a way in. She pressed against it and was surprised when it clicked and popped open.

Placing her fingers into the crack, she pulled it open and then looked at Venturi. He was watching her with a look of wonder and she hoped it was because of what she’d discovered, not because of what she’d done. She’d only hugged him because she hadn’t been able to find the words to thank him for listening to her and comfort him over the loss of his sire. She knew it had been a mistake the second she’d done it.

Raising her hand up, she called the magic and let it glow faint and purple above her palm. It lit the way, guiding her down the creaking wooden steps into the darkness below. It was cold and the air felt dry. She made the magic a little brighter, using it to light the room when she reached the bottom step.

“Venturi?” she called and found he was right behind her.

“This looks promising,” he said, peering around the room.

She focused and the magic became brighter. When it flickered red, she smiled. Her thoughts kept veering off to Valentine, affecting her magic.

Walking around the room with Venturi, she couldn’t see any scrolls or books. It was empty except for a few tables along the walls. When she found herself back at the point she’d started from, she sighed and frowned. They had to be here somewhere. Did Mathias have a hiding place in this room too?

She noticed the switch on the wall and flicked it. The room became bathed in a dull light and she looked at the dust encrusted light bulb that was hanging from the ceiling. Reaching up, she ran her fingers over it, cleaning away the dust and letting it shine more brightly.

“You take that side,” she said to Venturi.

He nodded.

She watched him for a few seconds and then started to search her side of the room. She had barely been looking for a few minutes before Venturi called her over.

He pointed at a panel on the wall behind a table, which he moved aside as she approached.

He pulled the panel open and she smiled at the sight that greeted her. Kneeling, she carefully removed each rolled up piece of parchment that had been stored inside the metal box in the wall, checking it to see if it was the one they were looking for. Each one that she discounted, she handed to Venturi to put on the table. The prophecy had to be near the top but other than remembering that it was written using a series of lines, she didn’t have a clue what it looked like.

“The journal.” Venturi pointed at a slim book that was sitting on a small shelf with some others.

She took it out and opened it. Inside was a piece of paper. Unfolding it, she stared at the cuneiform script and smiled, silently thanking Mathias for being so clever as to make a copy of the scroll.

She carefully placed each of the scrolls they’d removed back into the box and sealed it away again. Moving the table back in front of it, she stared at it for a moment and sighed. This whole house felt so empty without its owner but in a way he was in everything she looked at. His personality was stamped so indelibly on everything that although he was gone, it was impossible to forget him. She wrapped her fingers tightly around the book and walked back up the stairs.

Closing the door when she reached the hallway, she ran her fingers over it to check it was sealed again and followed Venturi into the lounge. She didn’t know what to say to him when he looked at her so she dropped her gaze to rest on the book.

“My head is still … the drug…” he stumbled on the words and she looked at him. “Will you be all right here alone?”

She nodded and smiled, thanking him for his concern. “Get some rest. When Valentine returns, I’ll go to bed. Until then, I think I’d like to be alone with my thoughts.”

He nodded and walked through the door. She listened to him ascending the stairs and stared at the book again. Walking through the house, she let her feet lead her to the courtyard she’d sat in before when she had wanted to be alone. There was so much to think about and still so much to do.

They needed to retrieve the second part of the scroll from the museum.

Sitting down on the bench in the courtyard, she glanced up at the stars twinkling overhead and then looked at the book.

First, she needed to see what Mathias and Venturi had discovered about the scroll.

Opening the book, she started to read.

Valentine drew his jacket up and jammed his hands into his pockets. He sighed and stared up at the stars where they were barely visible through the streetlights. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking, or where he was going. He’d just had to get out of the house and away from everything for a while.

Leaving Prophecy alone with Venturi was probably a bad idea, but it would be easy enough to kill Venturi when he got back if he’d made the slightest move on her.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he needed to hunt and feed. Although Prophecy had healed his body, he still needed to make up for the loss of blood and the way Kalinor had staved him during his captivity. He closed his eyes and flinched at the recollection. Images of his torture flickered in front of his eyes and he stopped dead, his body tensing and trembling while he attempted to deal with the things he was seeing. He clenched his fists, ignoring the pain as his claws dug into the soft flesh of his palms.

Heaving a sigh, he uncurled his fists and stared at the palms of his hands. What was he doing? He’d been trained to deal with situations like that so why had it affected him so badly? Was it because he’d been beginning to believe that Prophecy wouldn’t come for him? He’d almost lost hope. Arkalus had poisoned his mind with images of Prophecy leaving him behind and letting him die, while Kalinor had tortured him to the brink of death.

He looked at his surroundings, noting that he didn’t recognise where he was and then turned around. If he was going to successfully hunt, he needed to get somewhere with more people. All of the streets around him were empty.

Walking back towards the centre of town, he licked the puncture marks in his palms, sealing them shut and savouring the taste of his own blood. When he was done, he looked up at the stars again, hoping to find the sense of peace he was searching for there. Inside him was a growing maelstrom of pain and anger. He was losing his battle to control it and was beginning to feel as though the only solution was to find something to kill, and kill it brutally.

He frowned when a noise came from the street ahead of him. Focusing his senses, he searched out the owner of the muttering voice and found them sitting in a dark doorway of a closed shop. The old man extended a hand to him, mumbling something about some money for food. Valentine glanced at the homeless man’s other hand, noticing the bottle of alcohol he was clutching to his chest.

Something to dull the pain.

He stopped in front of the man and looked at him for a few seconds, the frown remaining etched on his features. He narrowed his eyes, waiting for the man to look into them and then reached out and snapped his neck with one hand. When the man began to slump onto his side, he took the bottle and looked at it, and then at its former owner.

It was probably a good thing he’d just done. What kind of life could this man have had? Forced to beg in a corner for food while drinking his life away. He looked down at his hand and sneered at the idea he’d touched something so unclean. Pouring some of the alcohol over his hand, he wiped it down his trousers to clean it, and then wiped the neck of the bottle. He couldn’t get any diseases from the homeless man, but he had his standards. The rules of the society he’d been raised in were still in his blood even after all these years. He would never mix with commoners.

Holding the bottle at arms length, he looked at the label and frowned. Whisky. It was only two thirds full. Such a small quantity wouldn’t get him drunk, but it would ease the pain a little and hopefully unlock the restraints that held his emotions inside. He could feel them eating away at him and he needed to get them out. He needed to stop for a moment and let the reality of these past few days sink in. Only then would he be able to deal with them all and move on.

Mathias.

He closed his eyes and drank every last drop of the whisky in one go.

Hanging his head, he closed his eyes and waited for it to get into his system. His fingers shook where they held the bottle, his brows slowly contracting into a frown and his bottom lip trembling when he thought about his friend. Turning sharply, he roared and threw the bottle at the wall across the street. It smashed into tiny pieces under the force of the impact and the sound of it echoed along the street.

His chest heaved, his breathing becoming heavy while he stared at the glittering fragments on the floor. He swallowed, feeling the emotions welling up inside of him, forcing their way out. Anger was replaced by emptiness while he stared unseeingly at the glass, all his thoughts swimming about in his head and making no sense.

Dropping to his knees, he slumped forwards, his fingers grazing the floor and his eyes filling with tears.

Why?

Why take him?

Had Kalinor even come to look for him? Had he come straight here to kill Mathias, knowing what the death of his friend would do to him? This was a twisted kind of torture, a psychological pain that he hadn’t been prepared for or trained to defend himself against.

His heart told him that this had been intentional. Kalinor was trying to break him and he had started by physically torturing him before moving on to mental torture. Who was next? Mia and Dmitri?

Prophecy?

He’d die before he let that happen. He’d never let Kalinor hurt her or any other of his friends. He’d send word to Mia and Dmitri as soon as possible.

He blinked away the tears, not letting them fall. He’d never let them fall. If he did, then Kalinor had won. His lord knew that torturing him wouldn’t break him, but it had weakened him enough for the death of Mathias to hit him as hard as it possibly could.

He had to be strong, but it was so hard.

His head swam with the alcohol and he smiled when it began to take effect, numbing him a little. Getting to his feet, he looked at the body of the homeless man and then continued on his path towards the centre of the city. He couldn’t stop thinking about everything and how it was all his fault. He should have stopped Prophecy from going to Romania. He should have stood firm, but he had wanted things to remain calm between them and undermining her authority would only have split them apart again. He should have realised earlier that the lord of Tenebrae was not the enemy. He should have realised a lot of things, but none of it mattered now. Having lived as long as he had, he knew that dwelling on the past brought you nothing but constant hurt. There was no sweet release of death at the end of a long struggle. To live an eternity, you had to first learn to let go of things that as a human you would have dwelt upon, otherwise you went crazy.

He took a deep breath and smiled at the delicate scent of blood that was tainting the air.

The first lesson as a vampire was letting go of your inhibitions. There was nothing wrong with killing. Believing there was would only lead to starvation.

He’d learnt that lesson quickly. He’d killed with relish and to this day, he still enjoyed the feeling of freedom and strength it inspired in him.

His eyes tracked a couple as they walked across the end of the road in front of him. Following them, he turned down the street they were walking along.

He grinned.

Scanning the masses that were filling the street in front of him, he searched out the couple. There were people everywhere, some walking towards him and others away, some of them milling around and talking to their friends. They reeked of alcohol, of sweat and blood. He could feel their heartbeats calling to him, reverberating through him. He snarled at a girl when she passed him by and grinned to himself when she broke into a run.

Lambs to the slaughter.

He breathed deeply, feeling empowered by the way he could so easily slip through the crowd without them even knowing what was walking amongst them. His attention was caught by a group of girls as they laughed with each other. They stopped when they noticed him, their smiles dropping off their faces and their looks turning seductive. He could have every single one of them. They wouldn’t know what they were dealing with until it was too late.