Vampire Elite (40 page)

He guided Arianna into the cell, wishing that she’d react by pushing him away, trying to escape, anything but the passive, dazed sleepwalking she seemed to have regressed to now.
 

He wondered if the cell looked exactly like the one she’d lived in for almost a year when Khay’s pride had kidnapped her. As far as he could remember, all bloodstock cells were identical. But then again, he’d bet that whatever small differences they had were really noticeable if you were forced to live in one 24/7 for the rest of your long, immortal life.
 

Numbly it occurred to him that he should have George run a heater down here.

And then Arianna was raising her eyes to his, tears just starting to spill down her cheeks. “Why did you bring me here?” she whispered.

“We’ve learned that you are connected to the Order. I cannot let you”—
let myself—“
put my entire race at risk because of our relationship.”
 

He watched Arianna’s eyes scan the room, taking in Anock, Ken, and Shakir, standing as his bodyguards and sons, ready to defend him with their lives from any attack.
 

But right now, it was
him
protecting
them
. From
her
. And somehow Tor knew that Arianna understood that.

“But—I have no powers. I can’t hurt anyone,” she pleaded.

“I know that. But by the time you do get them, it will be too late. I’m sorry.”
 

He forced himself to turn his back on her and start toward the door, even though doing so was killing him.
Literally
, he thought, as he felt his heart shattering. Between the pain in his heart, the struggle to avoid letting his emotions show, and the willpower it was taking not to yank her into his arms and take her away with him, he really thought he might die. And even if he lived, he knew he’d never be complete again.

“Wait. Tor, please.” Her voice was like a whisper of wind. “Don’t leave me here. Please, don’t leave me, Tor ... ”

Tor felt his systems shutting down. His heart, his mind, his body, his soul were all dying. There’d be only an empty shell left behind. He wondered if this was what it felt like to die of old age or a debilitating illness, sensing one’s organs going offline one by one. It was beyond the most refined torture; he’d have agreed to be burned alive, dismembered, anything, if only he didn’t have to endure this agony.
 

He turned around, turned his eyes back to meet hers. His vision had grown blurry, and through the haze her hair glowed like a candle’s flame, like a faint spark of hope. When he stepped toward her, he could feel the waves of grief pouring from her body.

“Tell me, did you have contact with Oberon and Serena? Are you involved in their plan? Tell me the truth.”
Please, say no, say no, say no, even if it’s not true.
He felt moisture on his cheek.

Arianna stared at him for a long time before answering, but when she did, her voice was firm.
 

“Yes.”
 

* * *

Between being really confused and having to put so much effort into not fidgeting with discomfort, Anock felt like a schoolchild.
 

Of course, the whole situation was miserable to begin with. But then the Queen had confounded Anock by looking Tor right in the eye and answering
yes
, she’d been working with the Order. And the King’s reaction had been even more astonishing: Tor had pulled Arianna tight against his chest, pressed his cheek to hers, and told her that he’d love her forever—and then he’d turned sharply and left the room, Ken and Shakir on his heels.
 

Now Anock stood facing Arianna, who stood immobile in the middle of the cell, her bottom lip trembling, the cheek she’d held to Tor’s glazed with their combined tears.

He had to ask. “Why didn’t you lie?”

For a long moment she stared at him as though she didn’t understand the question

“I couldn’t,” she finally said. “I love him too much.”

Anock nodded—to show her he’d heard her, not because he understood what she’d said—and slipped out of the room. He tried to close the door gently, but the click of the latch still echoed in the empty hallway like a vault sealing forever.

Chapter 54

Tor was the kind of guy who always took the lead—even when doing so was completely unreasonable, Anock thought, recalling the countless occasions on which they’d bickered about Tor’s need to strut on into any situation with total disregard for his safety. So Anock was more than a little troubled to find himself leading Tor back to his suite. The King was acting dazed in a way Anock had never seen him before, blinking unseeing eyes as he propelled himself down the hall on autopilot. Actually, Tor was barely even propelling himself; Anock had had to nudge him a couple of times to keep him moving.
 

That changed a little when they arrived at Tor’s study and Tor marched directly to the wet bar, filled a large glass with his favorite poison, Vieille Réserve No. 9, an outrageously expensive
hors d’âge
cognac, tossed it back like it was nothing, and immediately refilled the glass.
 

Anock had seen him do that before—overindulging on it was the most reliable way for Tor to get drunk enough to black out—and it was very, very obvious that this time would be worse.
 

Anock surreptitiously texted Ken.

“Want a drink?” Tor asked, and then without waiting for an answer, the King poured Anock a drink and handed it to him.
 

Was Tor already slurring a bit? How many times could he have filled his glass while Anock was typing the text?
 

Anock accepted the drink and took a small sip, exaggerating the movement to make it look like he, too, was chugging his drink. He needed to keep a clear head; Tor’s behavior was going to be unpredictable and he had to be ready for anything.
 

And there Tor was, Tor was already pouring another.
Shit
.

“Sir, this is not a good idea,” Anock suggested gently.
 

There was a pause while Tor swallowed his drink, and then he slammed it down on the table and faced Anock, his eyes abruptly losing their glaze and pinning Anock’s, hard.
 

“You know what? You’re absolutely right. It’s
not
a good idea to leave the female I love alone in a cell. Do you
remember
how traumatized she was when we found her? How hard we
all
worked to get her to relax around us? And she finally trusts us—trusts
me
, and I turn around and put her right back where she was, as though she’d never left the cell. Except she did, and I betrayed her. It’s like I’m ripping her to shreds again, with my own hands.” Tor scrubbed his hand across his mouth, hesitated for a moment, and then buried his face in his hands.
 

“You can still visit her from time to time,” Anock offered, but even as the words came out of his mouth, he realized how absurd they sounded.

“What a fantastic idea! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself! I’ll just walk into her cell and say ‘Hi, Ari! Look, I brought you some strawberries! I miss you so much! See you next week!’”
 

Hey!
It wasn’t
that
absurd. “Why not? There’s no rule that you can’t see her. You’ve restricted her communication with the Order and ensured that she won’t be able to use her powers. So why not visit her? I’d do it if I were you.”
 

“You know what, Anock? Just go. You’re talking nonsense. I don’t want to see her again, ever.”
 

“Being immortal, sir, you should know better than to talk about anything
again, ever
. Things change all the time.”
 

“Anock, please go. I want to be alone.”
 

“No. Not yet.”

But right then there was the subtlest of sounds at the study door—Ken, bringing what Anock had asked for—and Anock turned to answer it. He cracked the door and found both Ken and Shakir standing there, asking him with their eyes whether they were needed.
 

He shook his head
no
, but as it turned out, he did need them: just as Anock accepted the small bottle Ken slipped into his hand, Tor came flying past him and collided with Ken and Shakir. Out of some kind of bodyguard reflex, they grabbed the King.
 

“No. I’m going back for her,” Tor protested, his face wet with tears. He struggled a little, halfheartedly, but it was obvious that being stopped for just that second or two had killed his momentum and he recognized that it wasn’t a good idea. He let Anock lead him back into the study and return him to the chair, and he stayed put as Anock got him a glass of water.

Anock took two pills from the bottle and handed them to Tor. “Here, take these; they’ll help you calm down and go to sleep.”
 

Tor acquiesced without another word, swallowing the pills and handing Anock the empty glass.
 

Anock watched Tor closely. The King probably assumed he’d taken run-of-the-mill anti-anxiety meds or something like that, but these were hard-core, designed to work with vampire metabolism. They’d kick in almost immediately, hitting Tor like a truck and putting him out completely.

“Anock, make sure she has everything she needs. Take care of her. She’s not to be treated like ... like common bloodstock.”
 

In mid-sentence, Tor’s eyes had glazed over, and he stood up and stumbled to his bedroom. Anock stayed close, making sure the King didn’t lose his balance and fall over—but Tor got himself across the room and dropped onto the bed without incident. He rolled onto his back and looked up at Anock, eyelids drooping.

“Anock, what did you put in the ... ?”
 

And with that, he was out. Anock covered him with a blanket and then just stood there, watching over him. Tor’s suffering was like a knife slicing through his heart.
 

Anock might have stayed there all night if his phone hadn’t rung, calling him away for Guardian business.

He finally managed to drag himself back to the bloodstock wing several hours later after realizing that he’d been making excuses to avoid it. But he’d promised Tor that he’d personally see to Arianna’s well-being.
 

As the elevator doors opened to let Anock out into the basement hallway, the human, George, stepped out of his office. It was typical practice for the Elite to employ humans to deal with bloodstock, glamouring them into believing that they were employed by some kind of top-secret organization—or, more accurately, a top-secret
human
organization. When at work, George was utterly lucid, an exemplary employee, but when he left the estate, George believed that he worked for a corporate research lab.

“Sir?” asked George, bowing slightly. He seemed anxious—but that made sense; it was unusual for anyone in the pride to venture into the bloodstock area, and George had now had two visits in one day.

“How many bloodstock do we have now, George?” Anock asked, simultaneously counting the metal doors. There were eight, but some of the cells behind them were probably empty.
 

“Six, counting the new one.”
 

“And how’s the new one adjusting?”
 

“Adjusting?” George looked at Anock with a strange, tight expression, like a discreet butler whose employer was doing something outrageous. “There’s no way they can
adjust
, sir. They just learn to tolerate it.”
 

“Tolerate,” Anock repeated, suddenly unable to tear his eyes away from the row of locked doors.

Behind six of those doors were Amiti, living miserable, constrained half-lives. Were they stunningly beautiful, like Arianna and Ismen? Of course they were; all Amiti were. Unless the conditions in which they lived—in which they were
kept
—destroyed their beauty. He tried, and failed, to picture Arianna and Ismen bedraggled, dirty, ill-nourished.

Were the bloodstock behind those doors fed well? Given clothes? Able to stay clean? He realized he was utterly clueless about the conditions in which they were kept. He’d never really thought about it, never wondered about them at all.
 

It occurred to him that indifference to bloodstock was completely integrated into Sekhmi culture, something no one ever noticed, just as they didn’t notice the air they breathed. Had those barriers always been there? If not, had they been carefully erected by the first Sekhmi to keep bloodstock—or had they just grown organically?
 

His musing was interrupted as another thought slammed into his consciousness with the force of a speeding train: behind one of those doors lived the Amiti whose blood he’d been living on for the past three years.
 

Blood was what kept all vampires alive, of course, but that didn’t mean that all blood—even all Amiti blood—was equal. Every member of the pride had their preferred blood. Of course, everyone thought their choice was objectively the best, but Anock knew everyone else was wrong. The blood he’d preferred for three years now was the most lovely he’d ever tasted. As far as he was concerned, it was the nectar of the gods, with a uniquely sweet aroma that he thought of as night-blooming lilies. Which might have been total bullshit: like all Sekhmi, he had a refined palate, but he didn’t usually put much stock in
talking
about it, and really, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain that he knew exactly what a night lily smelled like. But it
felt
accurate, and somehow he knew that what he was captivated by was the overall
idea
of the lily, so he didn’t want to overanalyze it.
 

But right now, his body was wound tight as a spring, his mind reeling as his vision of night-blooming lilies crashed head-on into the reality of those grim metal doors and the cells behind them. Behind one of these doors was a female—surely it must be a female—who’d been his personal blood-supply for the past three years. She lived in a tiny, windowless, underground cell, deprived of everything except what was absolutely necessary to keep her alive. How could a flower survive without fresh air and sunshine?