Blood and Fire (27 page)

“Nooo, I would. Now you’re making a joke of it.”

Gabriel sighed. “It is my fate to be a passing fancy. Your friend is still in love with her wizard. Trust me on this, Ari.”

“Yeah, right. It’s getting close to dawn. You better hurry.” She flashed him a reluctant smile as she turned toward the door. “It really isn’t you I’m worried about. I’m afraid I can’t trust Claris not to lose her heart.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The following evening Ari and Andreas accompanied Prince Bolivar as he approached the entrance to the destroyed Canadian compound. Ari looked around, absorbing the scene visually, keeping her other senses blocked. She wasn’t ready for any emotional input. First, she wanted to understand the mechanics of what had happened.

“These are reinforced steel doors.” Bolivar pointed to the main entrance leading into the underground vampire court. The prince was tense, visibly shaken. “Swatted down. There’s only one dent in the metal.”

A single massive blow. Nothing less than Ari had expected. Everyone knew Ursula had super strength. But what Ari was looking for tonight was any evidence of the vampiress’s mental powers. The enforcer hadn’t attempted to bespell Ari at the meeting in Toronto, nor had she displayed any psychic ability in countering the witch coven’s attack. She always used brute force. And that was unusual. Enough to draw Ari’s attention.

She accompanied the vampires inside the compound and looked around the deserted rooms. Broken and tumbled furniture lay scattered across the floor. Not a gory scene. The blood and bodies had already returned to nature through the process of accelerated decomposition inherent to vampires.

“What happened once she was inside?” Ari asked.

“She killed everyone.”

“Killed them how?”

The prince stiffened, visibly offended by her blunt question. “Dismembered.”

“Did she bespell them first?”

“No. You want all the bloody details?” he asked angrily. “Here, listen to it yourself. Does it sound like they were hypnotized?” He pulled out a cell phone, punched in a string of numbers, and put it on speaker. “I was in a meeting, so it’s all on voice mail.”

At first she heard a normal voice. The caller was informing his prince of a break-in at the compound. Then the screaming began, and the occasional high-pitched laughter that Ari recognized as Ursula’s. The sounds sent prickles over her skin. Ari wanted to ask Bolivar to turn it off, but she forced herself to listen. When she heard the cell phone in the recording clatter to the floor, the sounds of tearing flesh and slurping were almost unbearable. She didn’t look at Andreas or Bolivar. Both vampires were shielding, but the pain would be in their eyes.

The screams continued until the voice mail ran out of message space.

“Goddess, help us,” Ari said under her breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” Bolivar’s voice was tight.

“Eleven were lost?” Andreas asked, breaking into the raw tension.

“A minimal crew. I’d moved everyone else to safety.” Bolivar looked off into the distance. “There were enough to keep things running and warn off the curious. I never thought she’d come here.”

Ari walked into the hall while Andreas and Bolivar continued to talk. She wanted to be away from the powerful auras of the two master vampires before she opened her senses. She found the main audience chamber and entered. Three broken chairs. Otherwise the room looked untouched, but an aura of death still clung to the air. At the time of the attack, there would have been blood and body parts. Ari halted in the middle of the room and took a deep breath. She lowered her shields and reached out with her witch senses.

Terror and rage surrounded her, overwhelmed her. Vivid images of savagery; smells, emotions, a crushing sensation of power. Her knees went wobbly. Ari staggered, regained her balance, and cut off her sensory receptors.

Andreas appeared at her side. “Arianna, I saw part of that.”

Unable to speak, she fought to recover, taking several deep breaths.

“Is she all right?” Bolivar watched from behind Andreas, his voice concerned, even leery.

“Sorry. That was awful,” she whispered to Andreas. “Too much all at once. I should have shut down our link completely. There’s no reason for both of us to feel this.” She looked at him with eyes narrowed in pain. “Give me a moment, and I’ll try again.”

Andreas took her hand without speaking. It calmed her, and she straightened. “I’m fine now.” She looked at Bolivar. “This is hard to do with so much vampiric energy around me. It would be easier if you waited outside.” When he nodded, she turned to Andreas. “You help to ground me, but if you stay, you have to block your magic and not interfere.”

“Whatever you need. As long as you are not in danger, but if I think you are…”

“Understood.”

Ari waited until Bolivar was outside, grasped Andreas’s hands with hers, and released her magic one thread at a time.

The sensory input came piece by piece this time. She smelled the metallic odor of blood, caught glimpses of the massacre as Ursula slashed her way around the compound, moving so swiftly she appeared to wink in and out. When the terror and panic of the dying grew to an overwhelming crescendo, Ari tightened her hold on Andreas’s hands, and he drew her back from the brink.

Ari’s senses centered on Ursula now. The rage. The lust of power. Ursula’s frustration at not being able to experience her victim’s terror. The intense pleasure from ripping flesh with her claws.

Ari severed the connection. “The freaking bitch. She enjoyed this.”

Andreas didn’t speak until she loosened the death grip on his hands. “Shall we go outside?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

They found Bolivar leaning against their rental car.

“Did you learn anything?” he asked, straightening.

“I know a lot more about Ursula, about how she functions.” Ari focused on the moonlit parking lot and breathed in the crisp night air. It helped clear the ugliness away. “She’s clever, not smart. She can’t get into their minds, but she
feels
things and reacts to them.”

“But can you find her? Did you learn where she’s hiding? I’d like to kill her with these.” Bolivar held up his clenched fists.

Ari nodded, understanding his rage. “I have no idea where she is. She wasn’t thinking about anything except killing.” Ari wasn’t going to mention Ursula’s glee. It would only increase Bolivar’s pain.

“Then we wasted our time coming here.”

“No, that’s not true. I learned what Ursula can’t do.”

“Will it help destroy her?” Bolivar’s face was a frozen mask, but she heard the fanatical edge to his voice.

“Maybe. She can’t read or influence minds. She lacks the power to get inside her victims’ heads and control them.”

“That’s not possible. Every vampire can manipulate minds.”

Even Andreas gave her a doubtful look.

“Not Ursula. Seriously. I felt her try, felt her frustration. She can’t do it. I doubt if she was ever a big thinker, and her telepathic and hypnotic powers never developed. That’s why she’s channeled all her energies into physical prowess. If the witch coven had known that, they might have defeated her. Ursula is all brawn, no brain.”

“But can we use that to kill her?” Bolivar sounded as if now the possibility had been raised, he couldn’t dare to believe it.

“Um, I can’t guarantee that. The witches could have, because they caught her off-guard, preoccupied. She is so single-minded, they could have -made a psychic attack before she realized they were there. I think that’s how she was injured. The witches just didn’t realize they had the advantage, and they fled.”

“You could always kill her with witch fire,” Andreas said.

“Yes, but I can’t be everywhere. Now that we know she can’t hypnotize her prey, we can plan to use other weapons. As long as we strike first. If anyone hesitates, she’ll kill them before they can react. That’s the problem with relying on the witch fire. I can’t strike first.”

“Your Witches’ Oath,” he said.

She’d sworn to use the magical fire only for defense. That meant she had to wait for the other side to make the first aggressive move.

Bolivar’s face deflated. “We’d have to catch her by surprise, which isn’t likely to happen. Any other ideas?”

“Not yet,” she admitted.

Andreas’s voice was tight. “Ursula will keep killing until we stop her.”

“I know.” Ari looked at the two men. “And she’s obviously recovered from any damage the coven did. She won’t wait long to strike again.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Once they were aboard the jet and flying home, Ari gave Andreas the other details she’d gathered at the scene. The terror she’d felt from the dying, Ursula’s savagery and pleasure. Ari kept her recital matter-of-fact, but she still shuddered with the memory and set her glass of wine on the table between their swivel chairs.

“She has no human feelings left. Not even a spark.”

“I know, Arianna. I knew that two hundred years ago.”

Ari frowned at him. “Yet you were with her.”

“Yes.” A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he didn’t look at her. “Need I remind you it was not by choice.”

“Was it as awful as I imagine?”

Andreas turned his head, a bitter twist to his lips. “Worse. You do not have the experience to imagine such things.” A darkness filled his words. “Please, do not ask Gabriel to describe what happened.” He hesitated. “It is a painful memory for him.”

Not only for Gabriel. Ari swallowed hard, sorry her question had caused his discomfort. “I won’t say anything.” She’d never heard Andreas sound so hollow. That Ursula had inflicted some horrible perversion on two young, vulnerable vampires was obvious. Ari didn’t need or want to know the details, but she had a bad taste in her mouth, a loathing for the vampiress…no, the monster that had hurt them. “Before this is over, I hope to make Ursula sorry she ever came near any of us—then or now.”

Andreas’s grin was almost genuine. “You sound quite blood-thirsty.”

“Only half of what I feel.” She shifted in her seat, growing restless with the dark thoughts that had dogged her over the last few hours. She sought a topic that would lighten the mood. “Did I tell you Dona rejected the really nice lady who wanted to adopt her?”

Andreas treated the topic change as normal. “You mentioned it in passing. What do you plan to do with her now?”

“I was wondering if she could stay at your place.”

“In my home? She is already there.”

“I mean when I return to the apartment. You’ve got all that room, and the weretigers seem to like her.”

He swiveled to look at her with a hooded expression. “You still intend to leave?”

“When it’s safe again.” She cocked her head. “I thought you understood from the beginning this was only temporary.”

Andreas looked away. “The cat may stay. I am meeting with my lieutenants when we land. Do you wish to be part of that conversation?”

Now who was changing the subject? “Not unless you think it’s necessary. Otherwise, I’m going to bed.”

He nodded. “I will give them the update. Can you talk with Samuel and Russell tomorrow and have one of them contact Toronto?”

“Sure, but I’ll call Mike myself. We’ll brainstorm about strategy.”

They lapsed into silence. Ari was drained by the experience in Canada and hoped to get a full night’s sleep before she had to deal with anything else. Yawning, she rested her head on the back of the seat and dozed off. When Andreas woke her upon landing, she struggled to stay awake until they were home and she collapsed into bed.

Ari woke countless times during the night, and the dreams began. She saw Ursula rampaging through Bolivar’s compound, tearing off heads and limbs, and heard the screams. She seemed to be gagging on the cloying scent of blood.

Choking, Ari jerked upright in the bed to find Andreas’s arms around her. He rubbed her back.

“Hush, Arianna. It is only a bad dream.”

When she shivered, he tightened his hold.

“It was so real,” she whispered. “What time is it?”

“Almost dawn. I was on my way to bed when I heard you cry out. Ursula?”

“Yes.” She rested her head against his chest as his hand smoothed the top of her hair. Her world came back into perspective. “How’d your meeting go?”

“Nothing new, but everyone understands what they need to do.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Go back to sleep now.” When he tucked her under the covers, she drifted into a dreamless world and didn’t hear him leave the room.

* * *

Ari woke on Saturday with midmorning sun streaming in the windows. She stretched, oddly content, despite the nightmare she still remembered. Her thoughts flashed to Andreas’s predawn visit. She would miss that kind of attention when she went home. Andreas provided some kind of anchor for her. She yawned and hopped out of bed. It was much too early for serious thought. Grabbing clean underwear, black jeans, and a T-shirt, she headed for the shower.

With hot water clearing the cobwebs of sleep away, she tried to put the disturbing events of the last two days into perspective. The rogue coven, Ursula. Both of them were deadly threats against her and the people she cared about. She needed plans to stop each of them, and she’d begun to see glimmers of their weaknesses.

Take the witches, for instance. They were down in number since the fight with Ursula, and Ari thought they’d lost confidence, too. Sophistrina’s blind allegiance was weakening. Ari would find a way to take advantage of that. And if one was wavering, maybe others were shaky too.

While Ari might have predicted the coven’s shaken resolve, Ursula’s lack of psychic abilities had come as a complete shock. The ability to bespell victims was so basic to vampirism that she’d never thought to question Ursula’s power. That didn’t make the vampiress an easy mark or any less deadly, but it did make her different and potentially vulnerable.

While the coven and Ursula were her most pressing problems, there were other thoughts still on her mind. Ryan would consider them equally important since they were tied to a murder. Where was Dyani? And Hawkson? Where was the bloodstone?