To Curse the Darkness (19 page)

“Jules, come see this place!” her brother called, his voice thrumming with the same excitement she was feeling.

But the more Julie glanced around her, the more she realized that, other than her brother, nothing was quite as she'd remembered it. Even that giddy anticipation she'd shared with Marc seemed different now. More grim. More urgent. More akin to worry than elation.

The air was dry and dusty and smelled, strangely enough, of horses. There was no fence, no gate, no guardhouse. And everything was far too bright.

What was going on? They'd arrived after dark, not at midday, so why was the sun still blazing overhead? Why was the street unpaved? Where were the trees whose branches should have overshadowed the grounds?

She made her way inside. Her footsteps sounded loud as she hurried along the upstairs hallway. There was bare wood on the floor where there should have been carpet. Where were the drapes that should have been pulled across the windows to muffle sound and dull the light? And why was Conrad, when she finally reached him, lying upon the floor of his chambers, distraught and weeping? The sight of him, so broken by defeat, called up a bitter taste of loss that was like ashes on her tongue.

Not my memories
. Julie shivered as realization dawned upon her. She should have realized sooner that she'd somehow gotten caught up in a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions not her own.

The scene changed. Here was Conrad again, but Conrad as she'd never before seen him—without a trace of gentleness in his gaze. Julie could not suppress the shudder his image evoked. Coldly commanding, he glanced around the room, his face as hard as the granite table at which he was seated. It was a meeting of sorts, and all those present were vampires as well—none that she recognized, but all as cold and hard and daunting as he…

Then another scene, a far more pleasant one this time. Conrad, relaxed and carefree, laughing as he gazed up at her adoringly, his face alight, radiant with love. She felt herself spinning and spinning around, laughing along with him…

Georgia
, Julie thought, not really surprised;
these are her memories.

Conrad again—angry this time, covered in blood and snarling in defiance…

The scenes changed faster now. Other names and faces, other men. She watched them turn to smile at her—hopefully, trustingly, longingly. And then she watched as, one by one, they died.

All but one. Christian. He wrapped her in his arms and held her tight. And as she wept, he pleaded with her for understanding, for forgiveness.

My darling girl. I'm so sorry. If only I'd known. I never would have put you through this. You must believe me
!

Waves of emotion began to lap at Julie's consciousness, alternating currents of love and loss, sorrow and joy…and pain. It was almost too slight to notice at first, but like a fire growing bigger, creeping close enough to lick her skin, the pain increased.

It was a far different pain than before. And the deeper Julie sank into Georgia's mind, the stronger it became, the brighter it burned. Until it became an ache in her bones, an itch beneath her skin, a shrieking agony that twisted and clawed inside her. And with the pain, hard on its heels and growing in intensity right along with it, came hunger.

Again, this was no ordinary hunger. This was nothing like she'd ever known. It was a desperate emptiness that nipped and howled at the edges of Julie's mind, demanding sustenance, demanding blood, threatening to consume her, to devour her whole, from the inside out, if its needs weren't met.

A snarl left Julie's lips. The hunger terrified her. It was more than just sensation. It was a living thing, a wild, untamable force. Unless it was appeased, it would destroy everything in its path, including her.

Feeling half-crazed, she grabbed the closest bit of flesh she could find. She sank her teeth deep into Georgia's arm, sucking harder as the room around her began to pulse in time with the beating of her heart, fading in and out of her awareness. Georgia whimpered as before and tried again to pull away. This time, Julie refused to let her.

Snarling, she tightened her grip. Somewhere in the background she heard Damian's hiss of displeasure. “
Chica
! No!”

She heard Conrad, quietly urging Georgia to stop struggling, to continue feeding; heard Armand, seated right behind her, giving vent to his feelings as a steady stream of curses falling in French from his lips.

You speak French? That's way cool
.

The words, accompanied by a girlish-sounding giggle that seemed totally at odds with the somber mood that had descended over the room, bubbled up to the surface of Julie's mind, carried there on a rising tide of memories.

Not Georgia's memories now, nor were they her own. They seemed to have been pulled straight from Julie's cells. They slid through her veins, cool and clear and ecstatic, an unstoppable stream that washed away the hunger and the pain.

Once again, Julie found herself viewing the mansion through the eyes of a stranger arriving here for the very first time. The trees were bigger now. The grounds were lush and green, though not nearly as overgrown as they would later become. It was nighttime. The air was cool, thick with the sweet smell of smoke. She heard music and laughter, saw crowds of people, some of them in costume. Then the crowds parted and she saw Armand.

His hair was longer than Julie was used to seeing it. His eyes were aglow with desire. His whole face lit up with pleasure as he gazed upon her, as he made his way through the crowd, heading her way.

Before he reached her, however, the scene changed and she found herself looking up from amid a tangle of Christmas tree lights. Georgia, elegant in mink and pearls, eyed her in fascination. The look on her face seemed made up of equal parts curiosity, envy…and hunger. At her side, Armand pleaded with her for forbearance.

And then they were somewhere else again. Georgia's expression changed to one of concern. Her eyes widened as Conrad lifted his head to the sky and howled in fury. His eyes were gleaming red and gold like the hearts in the wind chime Julie had bought for him.

How did I know they looked like that? I must have known all along
…

A chill swept over Julie as her brain tried to catch up with her runaway thoughts.
But I didn't… That wasn't me
… Her heart began to race as she finally realized whose thoughts she was inhabiting now.
My mother. I've become my mother.

Or has she become me?

She shuddered as she felt her sense of self being swept completely away. Wild, exultant laughter erupted in her mind and again she heard her mother's voice.

I will go to him and he will change me.
I will become Vampire. And I will live forever!

Chapter Fifteen

Marc pushed the door to the warehouse open and looked around. It was a relief to see everything looking just as it should, but it was frustrating as well. The nervous tension that had dogged him for the entire drive home still held him in its grip. Something
had
to be wrong somewhere, didn't it?

“So much for your extrasensory suspicions,” Elise murmured. “It looks like we rushed up here for nothing.”

“We'll see.” It wasn't that Marc wouldn't love to be proved wrong; he just wasn't convinced yet that he was.

Four of his people were cuddled together on a couch, watching TV. No big surprise there, he thought as he headed toward them. It was one of several such setups with which the space had recently been furnished. Installing multiple screens had vastly simplified his life by cutting down on the number of internecine conflicts he'd been forced to mediate.

He'd noticed early on that the majority of the ferals liked to spend most of their time like that—chilling out in front of the TV, leaving the warehouse only when hunger or some other necessity forced them outside. Agoraphobic vampires were something new in Marc's experience. That and their almost constant need for physical contact had mystified him until Hawk had broken it down for him, explaining how most of it was due to the trauma they'd experienced.

The street was a dangerous place when everyone, even other vampires, wanted you dead. According to Hawk, that's how all Marc's people had been living when he found them, with no place or family to call their own. And it had been years for some of them.

After all that time—constantly on the move; constantly on their own; never knowing who to trust; always wondering if their next meal, their next sunset, hell, their next five minutes would be their last—this warehouse and all it offered felt like paradise. Why
would
they want to leave it, or go back to the crippling isolation they had known?

The group on the couch glanced up as Marc approached. The smiles with which they greeted him were genuine, unguarded, and made it clear they were happy to see him—a fact that, as always, left him feeling both humbled and proud.

Simon gestured at the television. “Wanna watch with us?”

Marc shook his head. “Not right now, thanks. Do any of you know if Hawk is around?”

“You just missed him,” Maggie volunteered. “He said he was going out to get a bite to eat.”

Marc processed that for a moment. It was always a good sign when his more-than-a-little-paranoid second-in-command felt comfortable about stepping out and leaving the nest unprotected even for a short while.

So then why did he still feel so edgy?

“How's everything been? Everything okay here? No trouble or anything?”

Four sets of eyes widened in surprise. They looked at each other as though unsure of the correct answer. Marc didn't blame them for being confused. Usually
he
was the one telling
them
when something was wrong. “I think everything's okay,” Maggie answered hesitantly. “I haven't heard otherwise.” The others nodded in agreement, even as they all edged just a little bit closer to one another.

“I heard your sister stopped by,” Ralph offered.

“Julie was here?” Marc's eyes narrowed. “When was this?”

Again the four vampires shared a look. “I dunno. Couple of nights ago, I think?”

Marc sighed in relief. “Right. I knew about that.” Unless she'd made another trip out here since then, which seemed unlikely. “Do you happen to know if they found that boy she was looking for?”

“I think so?” Simon glanced at the others and asked, “Didn't Nighthawk say that? Wasn't that what he was talking about the other night?”

“You mean wasn't that what Nighthawk was
bragging
about that the other night,” Ralph said with a snort. “And, yeah, it sure was.”

Marc smiled. Bragging, huh? That sounded about right. “Okay, good. Glad to hear it.” And even if it had been Julie who'd actually
earned
the right to brag about it, which Marc suspected was probably the case, what did it matter? As long as everyone had made it home okay, then that was all he cared about. Hawk could give himself all the props he wanted. “So listen, I'm going up to my room for a bit. Let Hawk know I want to see him when he gets back.”

Turning away, Marc grabbed Elise's hand and pulled her along with him as he started toward the stairs.

“What's with them?” she asked sotto voce.

He glanced at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Well…who are they? What are they doing here?”

“I told you. They live here—with me.”

“I thought it was just you and the ferals?”

“Yeah, that's right. So?”

“So, I don't know what all you've been smoking, sugar, to make you think otherwise, but those are
not
feral vampires.”

There were still a lot of things Elise didn't know about him. Part of Marc wanted to confide in her, to tell her everything. But a little knowledge was a dangerous thing—
very
dangerous, in this case. And as much as he wanted to trust her with all his secrets, it seemed like a mistake to say too much too soon. Technically, however, she wasn't entirely wrong. What made vampires go feral was having no sire, no House, nothing to ground them or keep them sane. Everybody here had a sire now—him. At the thought, another wave of pride washed over him. He'd made that happen for them; that was all down to him.

“Okay, you got me there.” Marc dropped Elise's hand and gestured for her to precede him up the stairs. “They were feral, and now they're not. Now they're mine.” His people, his House, his family. All his.

“Oh, please,” Elise scoffed as she headed up the stairs. “You're talking nonsense again. You can't just adopt people like…well, like they're a pack of stray dogs you've decided to take pity on. You think it's as simple as giving them a bath and a place to stay and fattening them up a bit? You think, if you do all that, you can magically change their nature, erase the damage being feral has done to them, return them to normal? Well, it's not and you can't.”

“Are you sure about that?” Marc teased. He reached the top of the stairs and took her hand once more before leading her in the direction of his private suite. “Because I think that's exactly what I've done.”

“No. Impossible. Once a feral, always a feral. That's just how it is.”

“Well, maybe you're wrong. Maybe it's
exactly
that simple. Maybe it's just that no one's ever tried it before. Or—maybe—I'm just that good.”

Elise sighed heavily. “You have no idea how much I wish that could be the case. I may not be sure of much, but if there's one thing I do know, it's that going feral is a death sentence. There's no coming back from it, Marc. And trust me when I say that I'd give anything in the world for things to be otherwise. Because, at this point, that's where everyone in my House is headed, and there's precious little any of us can do to stop it.”

“Well, I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you.” Marc said grimly as they paused outside his door.

“Easy for you to say.”

“Listen to me now,” he said as he turned to face her, taking both her hands in his and staring deep into her eyes. “I told you once already that I'll always take care of you, that I'll never let anything happen to you. I meant that. I just really wish you'd trust me.” If Elise went feral, he would simply claim her for his own, just as he'd done with the others. He'd claim her anyway, of course, feral or not, and fight whoever he had to for the right to keep her. He just wasn't sure how he'd go about doing that, or if he'd win, or even if she'd let him.

The idea of going to war with another House, even one as small and weak and undefended as Elise's House, was not something he ever thought he'd find himself doing. He'd do it if he had to. He'd do almost anything to keep Elise safe—and not just her, but both of his families, as well—but he wasn't looking forward to it.

Elise remained silent for a long moment. Finally she said, “It's got nothing to do with trust.”

“Oh, no?”

“No. It's about survival. It's about having…realistic expectations.”

“My expectations
are
realistic.”

“No, Marc. They're really not.”

“Elise…”

“Look, the very fact that you can stand here and say that, that you could even think it…” She sighed and shook her head. “I don't know what kind of charmed life you've been living up until now, or how you've managed to hang on to that naïve optimism of yours for so long. I'd have thought losing an eye would have taught you
something
, but you're a dreamer, Marc. And, attractive though that is, it's a dangerous trait. I've never known things to work out well for people like us.”

Should he tell her the truth, Marc wondered—about himself, his past, his eye—just to put her mind at ease? If it were just his own safety he'd be risking, it wouldn't even have been a question. He'd already have told her by now. But there were so many others he had to think of, so many others who might be hurt as a result of his actions…

“Why do you think you've been having such a hard time finding Audrey?” Elise asked, surprising him with the change of subject, and again when she answered her own question. “It's because no one in our House is willing to give her up, that's why. No one wants to take the risk of us all going feral.”

Marc's jaw clenched. “So you
do
know where she is.”

Elise shook her head. “No, Marc. That's not what I'm saying. She's nowhere on my radar—I promise you that. And I sincerely hope I'm not on hers, which is exactly how I want to keep things.”

“Then why are we talking about her?”

“Because you have to understand what's at stake for us. I thought you did. I thought, when you talked about ferals… But you really don't get it, do you, even now? Audrey may be crazy, but she's also one of the top contenders for taking over our nest. She's one of the very few of us who's strong enough to potentially hold us all together. And I'm not saying she'd make a
good
sire, because at this point I highly doubt that will be the case. I think it would take a miracle for that to happen. I mean, just look at what she did to you! No one
sane
would ever dream of going head-to-head with Clan Quintano like she's done. So either she's desperate enough to gamble everything on an extremely dangerous long shot, or she's already well on her way to becoming feral. And, frankly, that terrifies me. Because if that's the reason she's lost her mind, what hope is there for any of us?”

“I told you,” Marc growled. “Don't worry about going feral. There's a lot going on that you don't understand.”

“There's a lot
you
don't seem to understand as well! A lot of cold, hard, completely unpalatable facts of life that some of us don't have the luxury of not worrying about.”

“Such as?”

“Such as…unless you're strong enough to make it on your own—which I'm not, which
most
of us aren't—then
any
sire is better than none.”

Marc stared at Elise in disbelief, unable to speak as all the memories flooded back—the pain of waking up in a cell to find his eye missing, stumbling into a fetid cave where Conrad, starving and in chains, was on the verge of death, watching helplessly as Vincent launched himself at Julie, knowing he could never reach his sister in time to save her—all because of Audrey. “You can't possibly mean that.”

“Yes, Marc, I do. As crazy as she's become, even Audrey is better than no sire at all. And don't look at me like that! Ask your ferals if you don't believe me. That
was
the carrot she was dangling in their faces, wasn't it? Isn't that what you said? That she promised she'd make a place for them in her House? Isn't that how she got them to work for her?”

And how exactly do you know all that?
Ice water might have been running through Marc's veins—the thoughts in his head were that chilling. He'd told her some of it, sure, but he hadn't told her everything.
This is why I can't trust you
, he thought, but as he pushed the door open, all he said was, “We'll see.”

“Marc! You're back!” Heather greeted him from the sofa in his sitting room, where she liked to curl up and read. Smiling in delight, she tossed her book aside and ran to hug him.

Her surprise caught Marc off guard. Either Heather's acting abilities had improved remarkably in the last few days, or the extra soundproofing he'd asked Hawk and the guys to build into the walls of his study was even more effective than he'd hoped. He dropped the duffel bag he'd been carrying so that he could wrap both arms around her. “Hey, Moonbeam,” he said, feeling a rush of tenderness as he held her close. “Everything okay?”

“No!” She pulled back, scowling, and punched him on the arm. “Of course it's not! How could it be okay? You were gone for days and everything's gone to shit! Why didn't you answer your phone? Omigod, I tried calling and calling…”

“I know, I'm sorry. I couldn't pick up. I forgot to pack my charger.”

Heather's eyes narrowed. She stared suspiciously at Elise. “Who's she?”

“Manners,” Marc chided, momentarily shocked at the echo of Damian in his voice. “Elise is a friend of mine. She's going to be staying with us for a while.” Forever, if he had his way. He turned to Elise. “This is Heather, my spawn.”

“Your spawn,” Elise repeated as her glance swept Heather. “Really?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “You like them young.”