Are we clear?
His kid brother, one of the only people he truly loved. In danger. Because of him. No, he thought again, teeth grinding, but he said, “Yes, we’re clear,” and got to work.
NINETEEN
“WAKE UP. ADEN, YOU have to wake up.”
Aden latched onto the voice as if it were a lifeline. And it was. He’d been trapped in an ocean of nothing, no sound, no colors, no sensations, with no way out. He pulled himself up a mountain, found that the line dangled over a cliff, and let himself drop, ending up in a river of ice.
“Aden.” His entire body shook. “Wake. Up.”
His eyelids popped open. He saw that Victoria loomed over him, black hair falling over her shoulder and tickling his bare chest. Concern painted twin circles of pink on her cheeks, and a clammy sheen glazed her brow.
“What’s wrong?” he croaked. He sat up, his entire body instantly throwing out I-hate-you vibes. His muscles were tangled around bone, and his skin stretched too tight, a rubber band ready to snap. His mouth was dry as a desert, and his stomach…his stomach was the worst offender. Distorted, grumbling, shrunken and probably in the process of eating itself.
“You worried me,” she said, straightening. She stuffed one of her hands into her pocket and played with something that crinkled. A wrapper of some sort, he would guess. “I was about to start pouring blood down your throat.”
Hmm…blood…
He licked his lips, trying to recall his last waking moments. He’d stepped into the ballroom, a party in full swing around him. His gaze had swept the attendees, and he’d somehow looked through a darkened glass wall and found Victoria. A new vampire ability, he supposed. How many more would he inherit?
They’d left the ballroom together and come up here to talk. He’d sat on the edge of the bed, and…he didn’t remember anything else. He must have fallen asleep.
What a wuss.
He’d meant to tell her about the dancing woman and the vision he’d had. The one of little Victoria and her whipping. Of her mother, the cause of that whipping. Maybe his impromptu snooze fest was a blessing, though. The news would have distressed her, and right now she didn’t appear capable of shouldering another burden. She appeared…fragile, easily breakable.
“What time is it?” He inhaled and—mistake! Every thought in his head derailed. His sinuses clung to that tantalizing whiff of her, shooting sparks of gotta-have-that through his entire body. Moisture finally flooded his mouth, destroying the desert as if it had never been. His gums ached, their favorite thing to do, it seemed.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” he croaked. “I’m fine.”
“As Riley says, I’ll pretend I believe that. And to answer your question, it’s dawn.”
He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, but they proved thick and stubborn. “Still?”
“The next dawn.”
Okay, then. That made more sense.
“You entered a healing sleep,” she explained.
Healing sleep. He’d never heard the term before, but just as he’d known the names of his vampires, he knew the meaning. A comalike state of total sensory deprivation, where vampire and beast merged into a single being. Blood cell count rose to extraordinary levels, speeding the curative process.
Healing sleep or not, however, he felt like he’d fought a few hundred bruisers and lost. Unfortunate, since he had stuff to do. He couldn’t snuggle up and go for round two of the mattress blackouts.
He threw his legs over the side of the bed. He would have stood, but Victoria placed a chilled hand on his shoulder and pressed. A puny move, but effective all the same. And necessary. With that one little movement of his, he’d set off a chain reaction of pain. And more pain.
“If I went into a healing sleep, why do I feel like crap?”
“Because the new tissue is untried. Don’t worry, though. Once you get up and stretch out, you’ll feel better.”
No room for doubt with such a confident tone. “How often have you had to endure this?”
A shrug of her elegant shoulder. “I lost count a long time ago.”
He didn’t like that. At all. “Want to go into details?”
“Not particularly.”
“I can have anyone you like punished.” Another mistake on his part. He’d meant the words as a joke, something to make her laugh, but she didn’t laugh, and he realized he’d told the truth. Anyone who hurt her, he wanted to hurt in turn.
Time to switch subjects before he started issuing demands and upsetting her.
Now would be the perfect opportunity to tell her what he’d seen. Her mom, Edina, trying to run away with her, her dad catching her, blaming her, whipping her. Would she be embarrassed? Probably. She shouldn’t be, but yeah, it would still kill her that he knew.
After all, he would have been embarrassed if the situation were reversed. He never wanted this girl to see him weak, at his worst. Like now. He could barely stand that she was seeing him bruised and swollen. And he had to be bruised and swollen, despite that healing sleep. Aches and pains were not exactly liars. But if he felt that way, she would, too. Vampires seemed to carry a thousand pounds more pride than their human counterparts. So. Okay. Yeah. Maybe this was one of those things he just needed to take to the grave. Knowing helped him understand her, and understanding caused him to toss a heap load of respect her way. No reason to ruin that by—what?—upsetting her.
Was that cowardly of him? His rationale to get him out of an uncomfortable situation? Maybe some would say so, but he honestly didn’t think so. Sometimes full disclosure was cruel and silence kind.
He was running with that.
“Have you had any visions of my past?” he asked, counteracting his decision in a snap. He’d just opened the door for her to ask if he had. And if she asked, he couldn’t lie.
“No. Let’s talk about that later, though. Okay? Yes? You need to see something.”
“See what?”
“This.” She turned, some kind of black remote outstretched in her hand. After pressing a few buttons, the wood panel over her dresser parted, revealing a large television screen. Colors flickered together, then images formed. She scrolled through the channels quickly, stopping when she reached a news station. “Listen.”
A somber-faced reporter stared out at him, an umbrella overhead, a light drizzle of rain falling. “—been dubbed the Red Robe Massacre of Tulsa,” she was saying. “Ten women, all brutally slain. Police are working diligently to find clues as to who could have committed such a heinous crime.”
“Tragic,” he said, “but why did I need to know it?”
Victoria hit Mute and fell onto the mattress beside him. “Females wearing red robes. In Tulsa. Where Riley is. Where Mary Ann is. They’re witches, Aden, and they must have been the ones chasing the pair. They were stabbed repeatedly, which means the fairies, vampires and wolves weren’t responsible.”
He jumped on the topic with the finesse of a freight train. “Are Riley and Mary Ann okay?”
Her hands wrung together, and when that wasn’t enough, she twisted the fabric of her robe, leaving wrinkles in her wake. “I don’t know. He hasn’t contacted me in a while.”
“Elijah?”
I don’t know, the soul said.
Okay. So the soul hadn’t seen anything bad. That beat the crap out of the alternative. “How can you be sure the creatures you named aren’t responsible?”
“Fairies would not have caused bloodshed. Vampires would have, but they would have licked up every drop of that blood. And the wolves would have left claw marks, not knife slashes.”
Hmm, blood…
The moment the thought registered, he sank into a dark pit of humiliation. People had died. Violently, painfully, and he craved a snack?