Jocelynn Drake - Nightwalker

“What do you mean ‘agreed’?” The statement implied that others were involved in the discussion about my fate, but there was never anyone but Sadira and her children around. As a human, I was occasionally brought before the Coven and other Ancients as a form of amusement, but Jabari had never been around then.

“Jabari and Tabor discussed it.” Sadira reached across the table and took my right hand in both of her hands. Turning my arm over, she ran the fingers of her left hand down the inside of my arm. “My blood runs in your veins—shaped your organs and gave you an immortal life—but so does Jabari’s and Tabor’s.”

“No!” I jerked my arm out of her grasp and took a step back. “I don’t remember either of them.”

“You were barely alive. It was easier to manipulate your memories then.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, pacing away from the table. There was no sound in the room, not even my footsteps on the stone floor. There were only our voices, because that was the point of bringing me here, not helping me to escape the pain. There was something she needed to tell me regardless of whether I wanted to hear it. “Why?”

“You were different, Mira.” Sadira walked to the end of the table and started to come around it but stopped when I backpedaled, trying to keep some distance between us. “There was no human like you. It was more than your ability to control fire. We could sense an energy in your soul that we had never felt before. So, we decided to make you into a nightwalker, but we knew you would have to be a First Blood if we were to have any chance to preserve this energy.”

“So you made me into a First Blood. That was part of our agreement. What about Jabari and Tabor?”

“Do you think Jabari would allow me to make a creature that could potentially destroy him?” Sadira demanded, incredulous. “Of course not. But if his blood flowed in you, he was sure you would feel bound to him, protecting him from your temper. It would also enable him to know your location at any time.”

I turned my back on Sadira, a chill sweeping through me as a slight pain throbbed in my chest. It was nowhere near as intense as before, but was a subtle reminder that there was another world I had to return to. I stared down at my bare arm, my pale, white skin unmarred and unbroken. The reality of my raw and bruised wrists did not bleed into this illusion. It wasn’t important. My focus was on the blue veins below my skin. Jabari’s blood filled my veins in some way, had helped to give me this life.

“Yet things did not go how he had hoped.”

Sadira’s words jerked my head up. She had silently walked around the table and now leaned back against it. Her small slender hands were folded before her stomach.

“What happened?”

“You remained…you,” she said with a smile, while an odd glow grew in her eyes.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means he assumed that you would be easier to control as a vampire because you could be subjected to more intense forms of punishment without being killed due to your human frailties. But you refused to obey me. You refused to obey any Ancient that crossed your path. Also, I refused to give you up, so you were stolen.”

I forced out a sharp little laugh. This was where her little story took a wrong turn and I was no longer buying it. It was a good try up until then. “I was kidnapped by the naturi, and we both know it.”

A look of pity crossed her pale face as she shook her head. I longed to smack that look off her face but remained standing where I was, my fists clenched at my sides. “Think, my Mira. Before you were stolen, we were traveling west, heading back from Vienna. It was only you and me. We had gone to ground just before sunrise in a tiny village just west of the Pyrenees. No one knew where we were. The only ones who could have found you were those who made you.”

“No!” I shouted, flinching at the faint echo that seemed to bounce around in my brain. I knew what she was saying and it was impossible. Jabari could have handed me over to the naturi five centuries ago. And he could have done it now. After the battle at Machu Picchu, I collapsed in his arms for a century, leaning on his strength. Then, centuries later, the naturi found me in my own domain and again in Egypt, driving me into Jabari’s waiting arms.

The pieces fit, but I didn’t trust them. Jabari hated the naturi. He wouldn’t use them against another nightwalker. He didn’t have to. If he wanted something, he simply commanded and the nightwalker obeyed. Except for me. I didn’t accept a direct order from anyone…but Jabari, and that was only because he had saved me from the naturi.

Gritting my teeth, I shoved both my hands into my hair and paced away from Sadira. My thoughts were swirling in an endless circle. Was she telling the truth? I knew she couldn’t be trusted.

“Why are you telling me this?” I growled, refusing to look at her.

“Because he’s searching for a way to replace you,” she whispered.

I dropped my hands back to my sides as I turned back around to look at my maker. “How?”

“The same way we made you,” she said, shrugging her slim shoulders. “I have helped with ten others, and I know there have been some I was not a part of. Not one has survived beyond the first year.”

“Why? What happens?”

Sadira shook her head, her eyes dropping down to her folded hands. “That’s not important. The fear is that he may succeed one day.”

“And then you think he will have no further use for me.” My voice was dead. Was any of this true? I didn’t know what to believe anymore. My eyes wandered around the room that was my home for ten years. It had been my entire world and Sadira my only contact with life. She had been warmth, and compassion, and love for those years. Had that been a lie too? Or was it the only thing during those years that had been the truth?

“I know you feel no love for me, but you are my child, my beloved daughter. I do not want him to end your life because he feels you are no longer useful to him,” Sadira murmured.

I didn’t want him to end my life either, but I wasn’t about to seek shelter in Sadira’s open arms. It wasn’t exactly an enticing alternative. “Why have the others died?”

Sadira shook her head and her image wavered. At the same time, the pain in my chest increased. “It’s near sunrise. We will speak more later.”

Before I could stop her, pain stabbed through me and my eyes popped open. The library with its tall bookshelves and grim men surrounded me again. Candlelight flickered, casting shadows around the room. Sadira sat on the edge of the table beside my hip. She was using a delicate white lace handkerchief to wipe blood from her wrist. Her skin was so pale she was nearly translucent, and her eyes seemed more sunken and shadowed. I could taste her blood in my mouth, but it hadn’t been enough. The worst of my wounds had closed using her blood, but I still needed to replenish all that I’d lost.

Just the taste of Sadira’s blood sent up a dull roar inside my chest. The monster that wound itself around my soul was awake and screaming for blood. I clenched my teeth and tried to push it back. I would likely kill anyone I tried to feed from right now if I couldn’t get a handle on my hunger.

Gabriel.

I whispered his name in my mind, sending the soft plea out to his brain. A wave of his emotions pushed back through me; fear, relief, worry, and joy all came rushing back in the wave of my mental touch. I wrapped my mind and heart up in his concern, holding them close to me as he entered the room and pulled me into his arms. I used those emotions as a way of protecting him from me as I sank my fangs into his throat and drank deeply.