Skye's Trail (19 page)

There were people in the room with her. Two of them, sitting close, radiating excitement, anticipation…lust. The smell of their musk made Skye think they were men, but like the scents she’d encountered when she tracked Brittany Armstrong, they weren’t clearly men or women, but something perverted, unwholesome.

She opened her eyes slightly and saw the coffins first. There were three of them lined up against the wall.

A marble table stood waist-high in the center of the room, on the floor beneath it a pentagram was drawn inside a circle full of strange symbols. A jolt of horror rushed through Skye, a fear so primal she had to fight the desire to lunge to her feet and attack whoever was in the room with her.

Only the patience she’d honed after years of hunting and tracking allowed her to bring the fear under control.

Once again she focused on her surroundings, this time noting that there was no source of light other than the black candles. She could see clearly though, and was glad that whatever Gian had done to heal her, had also given her this ability.

There was only one door and as Skye watched through slitted eyes, it opened and a woman came in. The candlelight flickered off the gold chalice she held in her hand, off the blade she wore in her belt.

Athame.

The strange word whispered through Skye’s mind along with a vague awareness of knowledge just out of reach.

The woman stopped in front of the altar, her black robes pooling around her feet. She did not smell of tainted blood and yet just like the psychic at Patrice Weldon’s home, a strong otherworldly presence hung around her. Skye was careful not to brush against it with her own aura.

The beings on either side of Skye rose to their feet and she knew that she’d been right in thinking that they were men. Like the woman, they were dressed in black robes that pooled around them.

Neither spoke as the woman set the chalice and athame down on the altar before moving over to the wall and opening a wooden panel that Skye had mistaken for a piece of art.

Light from the full moon poured in, bathing the altar in its glow. The woman turned, this time moving to where Skye and the two men waited. “Help her to her feet,” she told them.

Skye forced her limbs to go limp, weak, her eyes to appear fuzzy, drugged, as the two men lifted and held her standing between them. “Who are you?” she asked, making sure her voice came out slurred.

“Even now you ask questions.” There was amusement in the woman’s voice as she reached over and stroked her hand along Skye’s cheek.

Skye tried to evade the touch, but couldn’t without giving away the fact that she was not as weak as she appeared.

The woman’s hand glided lower, pausing like a lover’s caress on the place where Skye’s pulse beat in her neck, on the place both Gian and Rico had left their marks, then moving lower, to the bite that Gian had left over her heart, and then lower still, to the spot on her inner thigh where both men had also bitten.

“I can feel the power in you. Your blood will feed my children for many weeks.”

“Your vampire wannabes?”

Like a lover who didn’t want to leave, the woman pulled her attention from the bite on Skye’s inner thigh and moved upward, touching the bite over Skye’s heart and the one on her neck again before she focused on Skye’s face. “Amazing. The world is full of people who would sell their souls to possess what you have the opportunity to possess, and yet even now, you don’t believe.”

“In vampires?”

The woman’s hand stroked the bite mark over Skye’s heart. “Your lover is a vampire. He has marked you as his human companion.”

Skye couldn’t contain the small bark of laughter. “Are you so bored with regular hocus-pocus that you need this? Or are you just power-mad?”

Anger flashed across the woman’s features in the instant before she brought her hand across Skye’s face in a slap that sent Skye’s head snapping backward and left her lips bleeding.

“Bring her,” the woman ordered as she wheeled away and stalked to where the coffins waited like soldiers in repose.

Skye let herself be half-carried, half-dragged to where the woman stood. Satisfaction rippled through her in a heady undercurrent at the careless way she was being held, at the knowledge that she’d bought enough time for the last of the tranquilizer to leave her system.

The woman pulled back the lid of one coffin with a strength born of rage and Skye immediately recognized the girl inside. Amy Weldon.

There was no sign of life, yet no stink of decay.

“Force her head down,” the woman ordered.

Skye struggled, but not enough to show her true strength, as the men forced her down so that her mouth hovered only inches above Amy’s.

Within seconds the first drop from her bleeding lip fell onto Amy’s mouth. Another followed then another, until Amy’s lips were coated.

With a hiss, Amy’s lips parted, exposing fangs. And then the girl’s eyes flew open, burning hungry and red, void of everything but the need to feed.

At an order from the woman, Skye’s face was pulled away just as Amy surged forward, aiming for Skye’s neck. Amy hissed in frustration and struggled to rise from the coffin.

The woman said, “Go to sleep. You’ll feed soon,” and Amy lay back down, all life leeching out of her.

For a long, disorienting moment, Skye felt trapped, torn between past and present as the reality of the vampire in front of her ripped apart the invisible veil deep in Skye’s subconscious—freeing the knowledge that had been hidden there, that had roamed on the edge of her consciousness when she spoke with the High Priestess. Vampires existed. They had always existed. She was born to hunt them down, kill them. Pain seared through her head at the thought, clearer memories followed when the pain subsided. No, she didn’t need to kill all of them, only some of them.

Gian was vampire, able to blur the reality of his bite when she was aroused, to meld his own need for blood with her feral desire to claim a mate. She had taken a vampire as a mate, just as her Angelini mother had.

Skye remembered it now, saw the eyes as her mother’s vampire mate trapped and held her, commanding her to silence, to forget her origins if she was ever lost to them. She’d been too young to understand what he meant by silence and so the compulsion had lodged in her mind in its broadest context, had caused her to suffer needlessly.

The memories made her nauseous, made it hard to focus. But then the woman’s smug voice called Skye back into the present. “My children always wake so hungry. Eventually they’ll be able to feed on their own. But for now they rely on me to provide for them. I didn’t realize your value when I told my servant that he could kill you. I thought only to stop you from making any more annoying inquires. When my servant died and you survived, I was tempted by the thought of making you one of my children. But it would be too dangerous. I would never be completely sure whose power you would obey—mine or your vampire lover’s.” She looked toward the altar. Skye’s gaze followed the woman’s.

At the sight of the pentagram on the altar’s surface, the silver chains anchored to each corner, a fresh jolt of horror rushed through Skye, and once again she had to overcome a fear so primal that she knew she would die fighting before she allowed herself to be placed on the smooth, cursed marble surface.

“It’s almost midnight,” the woman said, anticipation rising in her voice. “We must prepare for the ceremony.”

Skye played for more time. “I assume my part is the sacrificial virgin.”

The woman laughed. “My servants have probably never been with a virgin. It would have been a novel experience. But I suspect they’ll enjoy you even more. You’ll be a challenge to them—a test to see if they can do the job of three men since your vampire lover killed their companion. I imagine they’re looking forward to worshipping at the altar until your body is drained of blood.”

Skye mentally gathered herself, readying herself to fight when the odds could be shifted in her favor, when she was close enough to grab the athame. “You mean fucking at the altar.”

The woman shrugged. “Call it what you will.” She turned slightly, as though her mind was already on the upcoming ceremony. “Put her on the altar.”

Skye struggled slightly as the two men half-dragged her toward the altar. With each step it became more of a challenge to wait, to hold off.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the woman open the other two coffins, heard her murmur, “Soon my children, soon you’ll awaken and share the night with me.”

Deep inside of Skye something uncurled, something familiar, yet different, a power stronger than what she usually felt when she allowed herself to become
other
—a power that whispered of Gian.

But there was no time to think, to analyze. As she drew close to the altar there was only time to act, to lurch forward and use the momentum of her upper body to swing the man on her right into the marble altar, to feel a brief satisfaction when he released her and she grabbed the knife. Then her hand streaked in an unerring arch and ripped through robe and flesh as she gutted the second man.

The stench of his tainted blood filled the room along with his screams and the witch’s shrill chant, “Up my children! There’s blood! Up!”

Skye could not risk a look toward the coffins. Instead she drove her foot into the remaining man’s groin. His screams echoed those of his companion as he too curled into a ball on the floor.

“Hurry, children, hurry!” the woman’s voice urged, but Skye had already grabbed the chalice and used it to break the window. Waves of evil poured over her as she climbed through broken glass, the athame still locked in her grip. The stench of foul, tainted blood hit her just as sharp claws grabbed one of her calves, raking into her skin and holding her suspended for a brief moment between freedom and horror.

Skye wrenched her leg free and dropped to the other side of the window, turning as she did in preparation for the attack she knew was coming.

The girl who came after her wasn’t Amy or Jen, but would have fit in at Fangs. Vampire eyes glowed red and feral, ferociously hungry, as she launched herself toward Skye.

There was no time to think, no time to do anything but meet the attack. Skye lunged forward, driving the powerful blade of the athame straight into the girl’s heart. There was a moment of shocked disbelief as the vampire recoiled, raking Skye’s shoulders before collapsing.

With ancient knowledge and strength born of power, Skye removed the heart and started running, shredding it with the knife and leaving it scattered until there was nothing left.

Chapter Thirteen

She only stopped running when her instincts urged caution.

Slowly Skye became aware of her surroundings, of the blood that trickled down her body where the broken glass had cut her and the vampire had dug needle-sharp nails into her flesh.

Music blared from a shabby trailer court, male voices yelled back and forth—rowdy, drunk—and she knew that it wouldn’t be safe to appear before them in her naked state.

She recognized this place. It was close to Bangers.

A half-smile formed. Except for the blood, she’d fit right in at the strip-club.

Skye made her way around the trailer court, stopping long enough to rinse the blood from her skin and the athame when she encountered a child’s small toy-filled swimming pool, and then she moved on, hugging what shadows she could find.

As she moved, she thought about what she’d seen, what she now remembered of her Angelini mother and her mother’s two mates—one werewolf, the other vampire.