A Shade of Kiev 2 (13 page)

I
returned
to Tiarni still snoring in bed. I removed my clothes, lay back down next to her and woke up with her hours later.

She rubbed her forehead and grinned at me.

“I drank too much last night… But, oh, was it worth it.”

She reached over to kiss me, but I got out of bed before she could wrap her arms around me.

“We should return now.”

She sighed and nodded. After we’d both dressed, she transported us back to her bedroom in The Shade. She managed to steal a kiss from me before I left her.

I exited the castle and ran to the beach. I sped around the circumference of the island until I saw
The Black Bell
in the distance, moored in the harbor. Behind it, I was relieved to see several other smaller ships. And beyond that line of ships was an enclosed area of sea water where dozens of dolphins swam about.

Good, there are plenty here.

I boarded the second largest ship in the harbor other than
The Black Bell
and looked around. Everything seemed to be in good shape. And most importantly, there were ample harnesses for dolphins.

Satisfied that everything was in order, I returned to my room.

Rummaging around in a drawer, I found some parchment and a quill. I sat down at the desk, and in a handwriting as much unlike my own as I could manage, I wrote:

“You work so hard, Damion.

You deserve a break.

Drink up,

Your secret admirer.”

I spent the rest of the day in my room. When evening fell and it was nearing the ritual time, I folded up the note, grabbed the bottle of rum from beneath my bed, and hid them both beneath my cloak.

I left the room and made my way downstairs to the main entrance. I waited by the staircase and watched as vampires and witches hurried out of the main entrance. Finally, I spotted the man I’d been waiting for. The old vampire, Damion. Once he was out of sight, I walked toward the kitchen area and stopped outside a door just before the entrance to the kitchen. I pushed it open, walked into Damion’s small bedroom, and placed the note and the bottle down on his bed.

Then I hurried off to the cave. I was the last vampire to enter, but I was not late. I took my usual seat next to Tiarni, and opposite Mona. Throughout the sacrifice, Mona made a concerted effort to ignore me again.

I was relieved when it was over. I was the first to exit the cave and I raced back to my room before the redhead could call after me.

O
nce the early
hours of the morning had arrived, I left my quarters and walked around the corridors to see if anybody was still up and about. I couldn’t hear or see any people. And if all had gone to plan, Damion definitely wouldn’t be going about any of his night-time duties.

I headed straight for the dungeon. But before opening the hatch, I paused. I couldn’t afford for anyone to scream this time.
There were far more people to hear. I stood there for several minutes, trying to figure out how on earth I was going to pull this off.

That was when I heard it. Someone shuffling down the stairs. I sprinted back from the dungeon entrance and hid in the shadow of a nearby column. A short, round vampire—clearly drunk—staggered toward the hatch.

Whimpering started as soon as he disappeared from my view, down the steps and into the dungeon. I crept over to the open trapdoor and peered over the edge. He was headed toward the far end of the dungeon, his back facing me. Seeing that all of the humans’ eyes were fixed on him, I managed to slip inside and hide behind an old barrel without any of them noticing. The vampire pulled out one of the plumper women from a cell and pulled her back up the steps with him.

He must have fancied an early morning snack. I doubted though that it was permissible to just swipe a human for himself whenever he felt like it. We were supposed to be served our blood at meal times.

There was a tinkle of keys being hung back on their hook. Then he closed the hatch and drew the heavy metal bolt.

That meant that I could no longer use that as an exit. Thankfully, there was another door that led into the kitchen in the far end of the dungeon.

Now it’s time to get to work.

I grabbed the keys from the hook above the trapdoor and managed to free and organize the humans in much the same way as I had done the night before back on the witches’ island.

I opened up the kitchen door and led them all inside. From there, they followed me outside, round the back of the castle.

Although my heart pounded in my chest every second I herded those humans away from the castle, I managed to get them to the harbor safely and have them board the ship I’d inspected earlier. I harnessed half a dozen dolphins for them and put the most capable-looking men in charge of navigating the ship.

I knew enough about traveling with dolphins by now to give them a few hurried instructions. They looked bewildered when I left them, but I trusted that their desperation for escape would drive them to figure things out.

Before I left the ship, one of the men I’d just been instructing clasped my shoulder and said, “Thank you.”

No, thank
you
.

I
took
a seat in the dining hall at lunch time just in time to witness Damion storming through the doors, his face filled with confusion and anxiety.

“The humans are gone!”

Exclamations of shock broke out around the table.

Rhys jumped up immediately and walked out with Damion. Isolde and Efren followed soon after. The rotund vampire I’d seen down in the dungeon last night had guilt in his eyes. Perhaps he thought that he might have been responsible, since he had been drunk.

The three witches returned half an hour later, each with ashen expressions on their faces.

“Damion is right.” Rhys’ voice boomed through the hall. “Somehow, every single human in that dungeon got away last night. It appears that the kitchen door was left open. The keys to each cell lay strewn on the ground. One of the ships is missing along with several dolphins. How these things happened is a mystery.” He shot a sharp look at Erik, Helina, and me. “Novalics, I expect that you’ll conduct an investigation into how this happened. And make sure that it never happens again.”

With that, he took Mona’s hand and walked with her out of the room.

Once the door had slammed behind them, Helina gripped my arm and tugged at me to stand up.

“Erik, follow us,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Just follow us.”

She led us both out of the castle and through the courtyard. She stopped once we reached the lily pond, out of earshot from everyone.

“What?” I asked.

“Tell me that you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Why on earth would Kiev have anything to do with this?” Erik asked, bewildered.

Helina glared at me. “He was asking me about the humans the other day.”

Erik looked at me, frowning.

“We talked about lots of things the other day,” I said coolly. “Humans just happened to be one of them.”

“You were asking me some very specific questions. Logistics.”

“So? What is your point exactly? You know how much I despise the taste of animal blood. Why the hell would I want all our humans to escape?”

Helina bit her lip, her suspicious eyes lingering on me.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know…”

“You’re being paranoid, Helina,” Erik said, squeezing her shoulder. “After all we’ve told him about these witches, Kiev wouldn’t do something as foolish as this.”

My sister paused, still staring at me.

“I really hope he wouldn’t.”

“
I
need
to go back and bring over some more humans from our dungeon,” Rhys said. “I imagine it will take less than an hour. It’ll be much quicker than trying to track down those humans in the ocean.”

Rhys bent down to kiss my forehead and left the room. I walked out onto the balcony. Isolde, Efren and a few other witches stood in the courtyard. When Rhys joined them, they all vanished at once into thin air.

Sighing, I walked back into the room. I changed into my dressing gown and lay back on the bed. I was still in shock over what had happened to the humans. I couldn’t imagine what possible reason anyone on this island could have had for wanting the humans to escape. The more logical explanation was that some drunk vampire had been careless and left the keys too near the cells during the night, allowing the humans to let themselves out.

I sat up suddenly as a thud came from the balcony.

What in the world…

“Kiev!” I gasped, as the vampire appeared through the curtains. He must have jumped from the floor above. “Have you lost your mind?”

“It’s a question I’ve been asking myself recently,” he said, staring at me.

“You can’t be here!” I hissed. “Get out!”

I gripped his shirt and attempted to push him back out onto the balcony. He didn’t budge an inch.

“Rhys is gone,” he said calmly, gripping my hands and lowering them from his chest.

“He’ll be back in less than an hour! He could reappear in this very room in the next minute for all I know. It won’t take long to—”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“What? He just said—”

“Rhys will be gone for at least a day, according to Helina.”

“H-how do you—”

He reached a finger to my mouth and pushed me down into a sitting position on the bed.

“He’ll find his dungeon empty. He’ll have to go hunting for more humans.”

“You… you did all this?”

Kiev nodded, his eyes never leaving mine.

“How? How did you—”

“I suggest that we don’t waste time with detailed explanations,” he said, cutting through me. “We only have a day.”

I clutched a hand to my forehead and moved closer to the open balcony doors, trying to breathe deeply and calm my racing heart.

Think. Think, Mona.

Don’t do something you’ll regret.

“You have your magic back now. Can you make us vanish?” he asked.

“Vanish? Yes, but—”

He stood up and took my hands, intertwining my fingers with his.

“But what?”

I thought for a moment.
What am I objecting to? Kiev has assured me that we have a day before Rhys returns. Is it that I don’t trust him?

No, I trust him.

I trust him more than I trust myself sometimes.

“But… where should we vanish to?” I asked softly.

“Take us to the old island.”

“Matteo’s island?”

“Where else?”

Kiev’s lips curled slightly in a smile.

I rushed to the bathroom and changed back into my dress. When I returned to the room I found Kiev staring out through the balcony doors.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I… I just want us to get out of here.”

I clasped his hands in mine and a few seconds later, we had disappeared into a blur of colors.

W
e reappeared on the beach
, just outside the main gate.

As I looked around, my first reaction was shock. The gate was wide open, the sand leading up to it stained with blood.

I gripped Kiev’s arm and looked up at him. I didn’t understand why he didn’t have even a hint of surprise in his eyes.

“What happened here?” I asked, as I ran to the gate and entered through it.

“The Shade’s vampires stormed the place,” he said, catching up with me. “My siblings… they drove everyone away.”

I whirled around to face him.

“You betrayed Matteo and Saira?”

He winced.

“They believe so,” he said. “But I didn’t. I was trying to fulfill my promise to Matteo that I’d bring a witch here. Celice. My siblings… they used me and turned the visit into an ambush.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They said it was the rules. I had an attachment to Matteo and this island. They had to break it.”

I clasped a hand to my mouth.

“Oh, no. That’s so awful.”

We stood there for several minutes, gazing around the empty forest.

“Did Matteo and Saira escape?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

He nodded.

“Did they all escape alive?”

“Most of them,” he said, lowering his eyes to the ground.

I didn’t want to stand in that part of the island any longer. The thought of bodies of vampires and werewolves I had known lying in the undergrowth somewhere around us was too much to bear.

I caught Kiev’s hand and pulled him deeper into the forest. Desperate to take my mind off what I’d just found out, I spent the next hour asking him questions that had been pent up inside of me for so long. He answered each question—and counter-question—patiently.

He explained to me that normally as soon as he left the boundaries of The Shade, he was hit by a splitting headache and started coughing blood. But he said that now he felt none of that. I took that as confirmation that since I’d returned to Rhys, he’d decided to make the curse dormant.

Finally, I stopped walking and stared at his red eyes.

“How did those happen?”

“I don’t know how, or why. All I know is that they turned back soon after I arrived in The Shade.”

We both fell silent and continued walking until we reached the edge of the lake. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as my eyes fell on the little cabin in the middle of the water. It was like seeing an old friend again. I scanned the banks for my old row boat. Then I remembered that we wouldn’t need that any more.

I held onto Kiev and transferred us to outside of the cabin’s front door. I entered and looked around. It seemed different than when I’d last seen it. It looked cleaner. The floor had been wiped of my blood. The bed was made. My clothes no longer hung on the back of the chair. Someone had definitely lived in it since I’d left.

“I’m glad to see you back in here,” Kiev said quietly.

I didn’t understand, but I nodded all the same.

“I’m glad too. It feels like home.”

I opened the balcony doors. The fresh scent of the water wafted in. We stood in silence for several minutes, just savoring the peace and stillness of the place.

“And now?” I said finally.

Kiev didn’t answer. His eyes remained fixed on a patch of lilies outside.

“What now?”

Silence.

“Why are we here?”

More silence.

My eyes travelled from him, to the lake, and back.

And an overwhelming sense of loss crashed over me.

Winded, I had to part my lips to gasp for air.

The chirping of the birds, the swaying of the trees, the sea breeze… and Kiev, standing less than three feet away from me—everything that was perfect about that moment suddenly seemed like the cruelest illusion imaginable.

Temporary.

Fallible.

Already broken.

I was an outside observer. And for one day, I’d been allowed to stare at the vision of a life that I would die for. A life that I could never reach out to touch without it bursting into flames.

“Why did you bring me here?”

It felt like I was screaming into an abyss.

My body began to shake. I grabbed a vase from the windowsill and smashed it against the floor.

“Why?”

He finally looked at me, but his expression remained blank, his lips unmoving.

My eyes burned as tears flowed. I launched forward and gripped his shirt. I tugged it so violently it ripped.

“Answer me!”

Seizing my hands, he wrestled me to the bed.

I punched.

I kicked.

I tried to bite.

He dodged it all. He climbed on top of me, his knees pinning my legs against the mattress, his strong hands stretching out my arms above my head.

“I’m not here to comfort you,” he said, staring down at me. His voice was husky, his breathing heavy. “Because I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. Hell, I don’t have any answers. I’m not going to pretend that I do. I’m not going to pretend that everything is going to work out. Because I don’t know that it will. Christ, any look at my history will tell you that it definitely won’t. All I know is that I needed to see you again.”

I stopped struggling beneath him.

His hold around my arms loosened and he gave me back control over my legs.

I reached up to touch his cheek.

He gripped the back of my neck with one hand and lowered himself over me. He traced my lips with his mouth as his other hand reached beneath my dress and settled over my abdomen.

Then he kissed me so hard it hurt.

He paused only to pull off my clothes. I stood up to tear off his already damaged shirt while he discarded his pants. Pushing me back down on the mattress, he remained standing over me. I suddenly felt shy as his eyes roamed the length of my body. He smiled slightly—on seeing me blush, I assumed—and after a few moments, he lowered himself again, his tensed-up body pressing against me.

As his hip brushed against the black rose on my inner thigh, more tears welled in my eyes.

But I fought them back.

I’m with Kiev. And right now, he’s all that exists.

He is my world.

He is my life.

And I wanted to give him more. More than he could take. As he touched deep inside me, even taking all of me didn’t feel enough.

He rolled onto his back and pulled me on top of him. Brushing my hair aside, he kissed every inch of my face he could reach.

“Your eyes,” I gasped. “They’re green again!”

He looked up at me as though that didn’t come as much of a surprise.

“I don’t know what turns them red,” he breathed. “Darkness? The Shade? My own warped mind? Hell knows... But now, I do know what turns them green.”