Reckoning (The Watchers Book 5) (15 page)

I dropped to my knees and pivoted around, poised for another attack. The boomerang was in my hand, sticky with blackish-reddish sludge, and I adjusted my hold. The steel was refreshingly cool in my sore palm. By the time I was cocking my arm to throw, not two seconds had passed.

But then my arm froze midair.

Two figures stood there. They wore long, dark cloaks with hoods deep enough to hide most of their faces. But the northern lights were high in the sky now and bright enough to cast an eerie greenish light along a nose here, a cheekbone there. Between the fineness of their features, the petite height of one, and the willowy silhouette of the other, I guessed they were women.

“Relax, Annelise. We are on your side.” The smaller one pushed back her cowl, revealing a pair of upturned eyes and a sheet of long pale hair. I’d seen features just like this…on Sonja. “I am Freya and I think you know my pupil.”

The tall one pushed back her hood. I did know her.

It was my old roommate. My nemesis. Drew Enemy Numero Uno. She’d tried to kill me. Hell, we’d tried to kill each other. Several times.

It was Lilac.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lilac?
The
Lilac?

My mind spun. Lilac von Straubing.

I thought I’d finally succeeded in wiping her from the face of the Isle of Night. We’d battled to the death. I’d won. Tracers had come and scooped her away after our fight, and she’d never reappeared again.

Well, there had been a moment afterward, when I’d thought I’d spotted her at the last Synod summit. But I’d convinced myself it was my mind playing tricks on me.

Because Lilac? Alive? Impossible.

And yet here she was, the same old tall sip of bitch. At least now the annoyingly thick maple waves of her hair had been knotted into a prudish braid. She was watching me, her eyes glittering with hatred, an amused sneer tilting the corner of her mouth.

Slowly, I stood. I’d lowered my weapon arm, but I wasn’t about to show them any weakness. “How did you escape? I thought I killed you.”

“I knew you’d be happy to see me,” Lilac said, and like hearing a ghost from my past, the timbre of her voice flashed me back to a different time.

A time when Yasuo and Emma were alive. A time even before Carden. Before I’d understood the full horrific scope of this world I’d found myself in. Back then, I’d dreamed of escape. Hope was something that’d burned bright in my chest.

But my optimism had dimmed long ago—fighting Lilac to the death had been the first nail in that coffin.

She took an aggressive step closer, forcing me to crane my neck to look up at her. I gave her a quick shove, relishing the satisfying
oof
as the heels of my hands rammed just under her ribs. “A little personal space here.”

Freya tittered with laughter. “Had I known there would be a kitten fight, I’d have sought you out long ago.”

Was that a low laugh I heard from Carden behind me?

Screw this.
Nothing riled me more than being patronized. I wasn’t going to play this game.
Screw them.

I looked back, and there was Carden, with just the slightest touch of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “Fine,” I said to him. “You tell me. How did Lilac escape?”

Freya answered for him, every ounce of amusement gone from her voice. “Our friend Ronan has many uses.”

Ronan?
The sound of his name hit me like a cannon shot, and I had to lock my knees not to stagger. Ronan was a deep wound—one I’d been pretending wasn’t there—and she’d just torn it back open.

The shock must’ve been clear on my face because Lilac gave a girlish giggle. She caught my eye and mouthed,
our friend
.

I let every ounce of loathing I felt seep into my voice, my eyes. “Glad I amuse you.”

She gave me a sneaky little grin that made me want to claw her face off.

I had to resist taking a step toward her and satisfied my bloodthirsty urges with threats instead. “Don’t make me kill you again, von Slutling.”

I heard Freya’s quiet laughter and gave myself a shake.

This was what the vampires wanted from us—catfighting and deadly childish antics for their endless amusement.

I needed to focus.

Ronan
. He’d told me he and Carden were on the same side, but to hear this…that he’d saved Lilac, who’d wished me dead, whom he’d known I hated…I couldn’t believe it.

I turned the full force of my anger on Carden, ready to give him what for, but he silenced me with a hard look.

“Caution, Annelise,” he murmured in a voice absent of all sympathy. “She is my queen. And I’ll brook no disrespect.”

Freya was his queen. Something died in me as he said it.

She was his first priority. Carden would help me, but ultimately I was alone here.

Hell, I was alone
everywhere
.

Cool clarity washed over me. I’d obviously been alone from the moment I landed on
Eyja næturinnar
and I was doing just fine.

I was alive. I was a tunnel-ride away from my mother. And I was armed, like, in the biggest way ever. Not for the first time that evening, I patted myself on the back for keeping the misericordia hidden.

I sucked in a quick breath through clenched teeth. I could do this. I’d been taught disguise and deception by the best.

I put my hands up in surrender. “Yeah, yeah, I’m all kinds of respecting.”

I’d made the words sound genuine, meanwhile I wasn’t about to surrender. Or kneel to any queen. Or yield to any man, Vampire, Tracer, Watcher, Acari…
anyone
. And if Carden didn’t know that, he didn’t know me.

Freya tilted her head as she assessed me. “That was well done, child. And now I expect you to show your sister the same courtesies you show me.”

“Sister?” I peered from Freya to Lilac, whom the ancient vampire seemed to be foisting at me.

She didn’t mean
my
sister. That was absurd. For one thing, Lilac was, like, ten feet taller than me. There was no possible way we were related by blood. I must’ve missed something.

“Sorry,” I told her. “I’m not following. Are we talking about Sonja?”

“No, we are not taking about Sonja,” Freya answered cooly. “I said
your
sister. Or half-sister, if we’re getting technical.”

Her words, delivered with such casual cruelty, hit me like a punch to the gut. I could only stare. Surely, I wasn’t hearing what my ears told me I was hearing.

“Shut your mouth before you catch something in it,” Lilac said with a laugh. “You heard right, so just grow up and deal with it. I did. I mean, do you think I want to be related to
you
? Thank God we only share a father.”

An absurd laugh escaped me, because into my mind flashed the image of my ne’er-do-well dad in Florida, Coors tall boy in one hand, remote in the other.

“No,” Freya said, reading my mind. “The man who raised you wasn’t your relation.”

“I have a father?” My mind was reeling. First, I discovered a mother, and now I’ve got a dad out there, too?

Lilac was the one who replied, and with surprising vehemence. “No, we had a sperm donor. And he’s long dead. We women aren’t just more powerful—”

Freya finished the thought, drawing out the words, slow and meaningful. “We don’t need men.”

The words
tell me something I don’t know
were on the tip of my tongue, but I knew better than to say that, considering my main hope for getting out of this alive had decidedly different plumbing than I did, and he was standing right next to me.

Having spoken of the devil, Carden spoke up with his customary nonchalance. “We’re good for a few things, I think.”

I ignored him, though. I even ignored the flirty light that’d briefly danced in Lilac’s eyes at his words.

What was really going on here? Why was Freya here? If we’re all one big happy family, might they help me? I’d assumed this was a suicide mission, but what if I was wrong? What if I didn’t die at Charlotte’s hand?

Hope
. Might I find it again? Merely thinking the word was kindling the most fragile of embers in my heart.

As usual, where Lilac and I were concerned, it was the same planet, different world. I was thinking big picture, while she was still pouting at me, her mouth making a little moue of distaste. “I can’t imagine being related to that bitch
you
call a mother,” she muttered.

That tore me from my reverie. Had she met my mother? The thought that Lilac had gotten to see her before I did was too painful to contemplate.

I snapped, “Are you still talking?”

Lilac’s own story came back to me in a rush, how she’d grown up with a foster sister in a well-to-do Connecticut suburb. Had she been a foster kid herself? On a hunch, I asked, “And I suppose you’ve met your biological mother, too?”

Freya put an arm around her and practically purred as she said, “Lilac is my creature.”

“Your…your…? You and my mom both…?” I knew I was gaping, and I didn’t have a chance to formulate any words before the ancient, ice-queen vampire was looking past me, already onto the next thing.

“Enough gossip,” she said. “Time for business. Carden, when I heard you were coming, I couldn’t believe it. It’s always a pleasure to see you,” she said in a voice so cool it was obvious it wasn’t a pleasure at all. “Though I could’ve sworn I’d given you different orders. I only wanted female delegates at these festivities, and yet here you are.”

My head swung to look at him. “Festivities?”

But he ignored me, telling Freya, “We came for the mother. You’d expressed an interest in her before.”

I was on instant alert.
The mother.

My
mother.

Freya waved an impatient hand. “I know this. We’ve given up on Birgit.”

Birgit?
Was that my mother’s name? The only photo I’d ever seen of her popped into memory…the long, strong legs and pale blond hair.

Birgit. Just sound of it propelled her from mother figure to beautiful Nordic badass.

“Is that her name?” I asked, instantly cursing the vulnerable hitch in my voice.

“Yes.” Freya stepped toward me to cup my chin with an ice-cold hand. “And you are stronger than your mother will ever be. You get your power from both sides.”

There it was. Back to this mysterious, promiscuous man who’d fathered me. “Was my dad, was he—”

“Vampire? No, child. A Tracer, long dead. But he’d been a man of great power.” Still holding my chin in her cool talon grip, Freya directed her next words to Carden. “Which is why Jacob wants her.”

Jacob. She’d pronounced it the German way, like
yah-cub
. Just as I’d heard it spoken when I’d infiltrated the Synod vampires before.

“So Charlotte was right,” I said. “Jacob is the one who has my mother hostage.” He was an ancient sexist asshat, and I’d take great pleasure in sneaking yet another prisoner out from under his nose.

But then another thought hit me. Charlotte didn’t want to kill me. For her, this wasn’t about my mother at all. This was her way to lure me to the island, to present me to Jacob.

And sure enough, Freya confirmed it as she said, “Charlotte toys with you, luring you onto Melkøya so that she might offer you on a silver platter to gain Jacob’s favor. Now that Dagursson is dead, the little pest needs to find another benefactor. But we can’t let her give you away.” Her fingernails curled into my skin as she pitched her voice to a creepy calm. “Not when I need you myself.”

My every muscle stiffened, senses raw and ready. The only thing worse than needing a vampire’s help was being needed by one.

The misericordia was practically pulsing in my boot now.

“And what better way to win Annelise’s loyalty,” Carden said smoothly, “than by allowing us to save her mother? Yes, it will throw her into Charlotte’s path, but that poses no concern. Lottie is young and will be dispatched easily enough. It’s past time that happened anyway.” He shrugged, finishing with his usual studied nonchalance. “You said yourself you care naught for what comes of Birgit. So let us free her.”

He was still ready to help me save my mom. Carden was still on my side. I stole a glance at him to detect the truth, get strength from it. But his expression was unreadable.

He
was
on my side, right?

Freya crossed her arms over her chest. “I said
we
don’t need the mother. Jacob wants her, naturally. He needs all the females he can get. If you take Birgit from under his nose, he will see it as an aggressive act. An act of war.” A look of distaste spread across her face. “And then my sister will get involved. She’s been looking for an excuse to take me out and clinch her little fiefdom once and for all.” She stepped closer, her delicate features crystallizing into something brittle and commanding. “No, we are here only for the celebration, as a courtesy. Not to stoke the flames of a battle we’re not yet ready to fight.”

That threw me. “Celebration? I thought this was a summit.”

But Carden ignored me, giving Freya a casual shrug. “This fight, with the Synod, with the Directorate, has been long in coming. Does it matter if it culminates today or next year?”

Though his words posed a challenge, the way he stood there, like a soldier at attention, was far from confrontational.

“Yes.” Freya’s voice pitched suddenly deeper, until it became a low, cold hum vibrating painfully in my ears. “Yes, it matters. As does your submission. So you will stop this questioning. You will do as I command. And you will leave Birgit alone. She is a loss, but it’s one we can afford.”

“Not one
I
can afford,” I heard myself say.

Apparently Freya heard me, too, because she swung on me, her eyes flinty with anger. Looked like I was no longer being ignored.
Great.

“You will behave,” she intoned, and I clutched my hand to my head, fighting the jaw-gnashing echo of her voice through my skull. “I will not see this precious balance undone. Not until we are stronger.” At those last words, she gave me an assessing look, head to toe.

Like I might be just the thing to strengthen her.

I made my face go blank. Because over my dead body.

Her eyes narrowed to slits, almost like she’d read my mind. “Do as your vampire tells you,” she said to me, “or I will change my mind about your future. And you won’t like it.”