Jocelynn Drake - Nightwalker

Positive.

I slipped out of Tristan’s mind but still felt something else humming in the air. For a moment I thought it was Tristan or Danaus, but the signature of the power was different. There was a magic user inside, a very powerful one.

Danaus heard me softly chuckle as he opened Tristan’s door. “What?” he asked. He probably thought I’d finally lost my mind.

“Some interesting occupants. I look forward to meeting them,” I replied. Of course, that was assuming Sadira could put me back together again.

Blinking against the bright entrance, I tried to raise my hand to cover my eyes, but it was too heavy to move. Instead, I pressed my head into Tristan’s bare, blood-smeared chest as he carried me into the great manor. It seemed they had flicked on every light in the place, much like James had earlier in the evening, attempting to protect themselves against the dark creatures entering their sanctuary. Before closing my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the enormous marble and wood staircase that dominated the main hall. On both the left and right of the hall, doors were pulled open and footsteps scraped and echoed off the hardwood floors as people stepped out to inspect Tristan and me.

“Sadira,” I murmured softly against Tristan, my lips lightly brushing the cool skin of his chest. I wasn’t sure if anyone could actually hear me anymore. The world was fading away—the pain had dimmed and I could no longer feel Tristan’s arms holding me.

“Mira?” Tristan’s worried voice demanded an answer, but I simply didn’t have the energy to reply. “Sadira! Where is she? We’re losing Mira.”

The young nightwalker’s question was answered with a horrible sound, a mix of scream and snarl. It was Sadira. I knew her voice, its every tone, pitch, and nuance. For years it had echoed through my brain, a singsong chant I could never escape.

Soft hands touched my face, turning my head. “Mira! Open your eyes and look at me now!” Sadira commanded.

My eyelids fluttered for a brief moment before I finally gave up the attempt. Licking my lips, I drew in a slow breath. “We had…problems,” I whispered.

A snarl of low curses escaped Sadira in a rough voice, but she was very gentle when she pressed a kiss to my temple before resting my head against Tristan’s chest again. “I need somewhere to work undisturbed. There. In there.”

My thoughts drifted away for a while. I was vaguely aware of Tristan carrying me somewhere followed by a flurry of angry voices and some slamming doors. A soft whimper escaped me as Tristan set me down on a hard surface that I could only guess was a long tabletop. The bright lights were banked at last and I was able to force my eyes open a crack. Tall bookshelves lined the wall to my right, broken only by portraits of grim-faced men with gray and white hair.

“They found us…” I forced out as my eyes fell shut again. There was no more time. I had to tell Sadira what happened so she could tell Jabari. The Elder would fix it; he’d be able to stop the naturi. “They killed Thorne. N-Need another.”

“I know,” Sadira whispered. I could only guess that Tristan had caught her up on the evening’s events while I drifted in and out of consciousness. She was standing beside me. Her small hand swept over my forehead, pushed hair away from my face. “But we need to heal you now.”

“Triad—”

“None of that matters. None of that matters without you.” Sadira pressed a kiss to my cheek and then my forehead. “I need you to relax your mind.”

“Tired. So…tired.” I was exhausted. Tired of fighting, tired of the pain.

And then something stirred. Swamped within the pain, I felt something faint shift in my thoughts, but as I tried to focus on it, it slipped away, pulling back into the swirling mist that consumed my thoughts. I reached out again, searching for the movement, and then the pain was gone.

My eyes flew open and I screamed. My thoughts came to a screeching halt as I looked around me. The wall of books and stern-looking men was completely gone. The gleaming hardwood streaked with my blood was gone. Around me were cold stone walls and wooden torches held in wrought-iron sconces guttering with firelight in the large room. It was a dungeon. It was the dungeon below Sadira’s castle in Spain. It was the room where I’d been reborn.

Another scream of panic rose up in my throat as I sat up and twisted around to thoroughly scan the room. It couldn’t be the same place. When I closed my eyes, I’d been dying on a boardroom table in England. Sadira didn’t have the ability to instantly flit from place to place like Jabari. It couldn’t be real.

“It’s not real.” Her disembodied voice floated through the air for a moment before she came through the stone wall to my right and stood beside where I sat on the long stone slab. “The pain was taking you away from me. I needed to take you away from the pain so I could heal you. The damage is…extensive. Organs have been shredded and your heart has been punctured. You’re dying.”

“I guessed as much,” I sighed. Anxiety crawled up my spine, digging claws into my back. I could tell my brain that it wasn’t real, but rising panic wasn’t buying it. It looked real, it felt real, it smelled real. “But why here?”

“I need you to trust me,” Sadira said with a soft smile, tilting her head to one side. “This is the one time in your life you trusted me completely.”

A snort escaped me as I swung my legs over the side of the stone table and dropped to my feet, putting the table between us. “I have never trusted you.”

“That is an interesting lie,” she chided. “You lay helpless night after night for ten years, completely dependent upon me to keep you alive. I was in your mind; you never doubted that I would return each night to you.”

I stood with my left hip pressed against the stone slab, my arms crossed over my chest. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sadira watching me, waiting for my response. I knew she was right. I had trusted her to bring me into her world, not to abandon me. But at that point my only other option was death.

For a moment Sadira’s image wavered, and I turned to face her, automatically reaching for her, but my hand passed through her. “So much damage…” Her voice whispered through the air, but her lips never moved. She was having troubling repairing the damage and maintaining the fantasy world. Pain cut through my chest, doubling me over, my forehead pressed against the stone table before me. I felt nothing but the pain for several seconds before it faded again like a wave pulling back out to sea.

When I stood again, Sadira was before me. Her face was strained and pale, but she was with me again. “There is so much damage. I wish I could reach Jabari,” she absently said. She wasn’t looking at me, but down at the table that stood between us. “But then he may use that as an excuse to take you back.”

Something twisted in my stomach that had nothing to do with the wound she was fighting to close. Jabari couldn’t help her. Only Sadira could heal me. She was the one that made me a nightwalker, and only her blood could repair the wounded flesh she’d helped to create. I hesitated to ask. Sadira was very careful with knowledge, well-aware that controlling the flow of information was the easiest way to control her children. Despite her distracted demeanor, she didn’t drop that information without a very good reason.

“Only you can save me.” Even if it was all an illusion, the words tasted bad on my tongue as I said them.

Laughter danced in Sadira’s eyes as she looked up at me. “How I wish that were true.” She chuckled even as the light seemed to die from her expression. “Jabari has watched you from the moment I found you in Greece. I was allowed to keep you only if I promised to bring you before him whenever he commanded. And when the time came to bring you into the darkness, it was agreed that you would be a First Blood.”