Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) (24 page)

The three of them looked at me with unabashed expectation. Jamie wanted to know, Nate
possibly
did too, and Peter seemed more than willing to share, so why not allow it? It was the past. There was nothing there that could hurt me anymore. Plus I didn’t have to recount anything; that was up to Peter.

“Why not?” I said lightly, hoping my smile didn’t seem too fake. “But I’ll warn you, in reality I’m very dull.”

“Not at all,” Peter insisted. “This woman has one of the most fascinating tales of awakening I’ve come across. Her name was Ana and she was barely eighteen, married for less than a year into the Fidatov family before she was turned—and feel free to correct me if I am in any way mistaken in this, Zara.”

I smiled instead of commenting, and gestured for him to continue.

“Rumor has it her husband only married her out of a family obligation.”

“Was he blind?” Jamie quipped, probably thinking the compliment would be well received on my part.

It made me feel worse.

Peter didn’t miss a beat. “Not to my knowledge. Anyway, her husband sought someone to kill his lovely bride. He went through a few different people so the crime couldn’t be traced back to him. Dragomir learned of it and took the job. But, as you have now guessed, rather than kill her, he turned her.”

I pretended to look bored as he told the story of my life. Ana Fidatov...God, that seemed like a lifetime ago. I suppose in some ways it was more like several.

“Now generally it takes around ten or eleven years before a vampire awakens for the first time,” Peter continued. “And it’s just before that when her maker would find and retrieve her from where she was buried. A new vampire’s muscles are atrophied from spending so long in stasis. Usually the muscles rebuild just in time for a vampire’s awakening, but sometimes that doesn’t happen, and they can’t move or do anything right away.”

“Don’t forget the fact that we’re batshit crazy when we’re newbies too,” I added. “Starving with heightened senses, comatose for a decade...it fucks with the brain.”

“That too. But while none know why, Ana did not remain unconscious for the full time. Dragomir told me he estimated she awoke after only seven years or so—and is the only known vampire to have done so. Unable to move, speak, or feed, she must have spent several months lying completely awake in the sarcophagus.”

In
the
dark
place
, I corrected him in my head. A shudder made my arms twitch and I couldn’t suppress it. I focused my attention instead on the people in the room. Jamie leaned forward with his elbows on the table, wholly engrossed in the tale. Nate was quite the opposite, resting back in his chair with his arms crossed at his chest, and looking wholly engrossed in my
reaction
to the tale.

I decided to stare blankly at the faux wood finish of the table in front of me.

“Ana was eventually able to move and broke out of the family mausoleum. What she didn’t know was that the children her husband had with his new wife had been hearing noises coming from the building, and had been telling people the place was haunted. This is what, initially, tipped Dragomir off that something might be wrong. The children were out there the night Ana was at last able to move and they provided her with her first meal.”

I chuckled dryly. “Nothing quite as tasty as little Romanian children.”

No one seemed amused, so Peter resumed the narrative. “Dragomir and Ilona heard about it, so they found her and taught her about what she was.”

“Try locked me in a cellar,” I corrected him. “Can’t have a half-mad vampire running around eating children...but Dragomir probably left that little bit out of his story.”

“Yes,” Peter said, “he did. Could you perhaps continue from here?” Though he seemed to genuinely want me to take over telling the story, it would require me to reach back into my memory and retrieve the details I didn’t want to think about.

I blinked. Saw the dark place in my head, playing behind my closed eyes. The smell of corpses seemed to suddenly linger in the air, the sound of my voice echoing in the crypt ringing in my ears. “No, you’re doing okay,” I brushed off his request. “But contrary to what he told you, he didn’t let me out—I broke the door down while they were out feeding.”

“Well. Ana broke out and went to her husband’s home. And this part is bloody brilliant—in a rather grotesque fashion. She systematically took out the family servants and everyone else living there, until she was left with Pavel and his wife...”

“Ecaterina,” I filled in for him. I got a series of questioning looks from the three men so I elaborated. “He kept screaming it out as I made him watch while I tore off her arm and beat her to death with it. It’s the sort of thing you remember. Go on, Peter.”

“After Ecaterina died, Ana eviscerated her former husband. She disappeared that very night. Dragomir and Ilona believed her dead. From all of my sources, she didn’t reappear for another two decades in northern Europe with the first name ‘Zara,’ and eventually adopted the last name ‘Lain.’”

“See?” I said. “Totally dull.”

“Wow...” Jamie reached across the table to take my hand. “That must have been horrible, sweetie, to be stuck in your coffin like that.” Concern filled his eyes, but to me it looked like pity.

I nervously shook out of his grasp and offered a relaxed smile. “Well, at least I don’t need to pay a shrink to tell me why I’m claustrophobic. So, Peter, do you know anything about Jamie?”

Peter glanced over at the other vampire in the room. “No, I don’t think I’m familiar with him.”

Jamie actually looked hurt and his mouth dropped wide open. “What do you mean? How can you not have heard of me? I’m interesting!”

“How about we get back to why we’re here,” Nate suggested.

“No,” Jamie said stubbornly. “This guy has been studying vampires, and he doesn’t know who I am?”

“Do you have a last name? Have you always been known as ‘Jamie?’” Peter asked.

“Well, no,” he admitted. “I’m from France, originally—”

“That’s it.” A look of understanding crossed Peter’s face. “Louis. You changed your name back in the early eighties after popularity of those Anne Rice novels.”

“Nothing like people confusing you with a fictional character,” Jamie muttered. “You should hear about the troubles my teenage friend from Verona, Juliet, has had.”

“Yes, I recall now—you were a nobleman. Paid for your immortality, from what I heard.”

“Christ, you even make my story sound interesting,” I said with a laugh.

“Perhaps we can discuss this
after
we figure out who’s been killing the coven members?” Nate interrupted. There was a dark, agitated tone to his voice, and I began to worry about what possible spells he had prepared for a roomful of people who wouldn’t stay on topic.

A troubled look filled Peter’s gentle face as he scrutinized his friend’s expression. “You’re using magic again, aren’t you?”

“Certain events have called for it,” Nate replied sharply.

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“He gets irritable,” Peter explained. “Usually he’s a lot more...patient.”

“Does he always brood this much too?”

“We’re talking about who’s trying to kill us,” Nate snapped.

Peter sat up straight and tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Quite right.
I
have heard it’s a secret government special task force.”

Silence followed his words. He said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that it took a few moments for it to register.

“So the North American governments have a secret, supernatural-eliminating team?” I said. “Wow. Didn’t think they had it in them. But I should have suspected something here in Canada—I knew the Liberals were up to something being in power for all those years.”

“No, let me rephrase that,” Peter said. “It’s a special tasks force owned by the secret government. Or, rather, a member of it.”

“Oh...because that makes so much more sense,” I said. “The Illuminati did it. Of course.”

“The Illuminati was made up to keep conspiracy theorists busy,” Peter said. “The actual secret government exists on this plane and a few others. As you probably guessed, they aren’t the most agreeable bunch. Some are half-demons, others are warlocks and witches, and there’s even the odd human who has managed to buy his way in.”

Alrighty then. There was a) a secret government, b) they had a special tasks force, and c) wanted to kidnap me. That made perfect sense.

If everyone was incredibly stoned.

“Why are they killing covens and kidnapping vampires, then?” I asked.

“
They
aren’t exactly doing it, per se. It turns out they have an opening in their little circle. A couple of mortals were in the running, and it looks like the one taking the lead has been causing this. He—or she—was given a few resources from the shadow government, then left to his own devices to fulfill his plan. It seems wiping out the most powerful covens was quite impressive.”

“But why take vampires alive?” Nate asked.

“That is a mystery to everyone I talked to,” Peter said. “As is the identity of the individual behind it.”

Back at square one, then. Wheels turned in my head as I laid out everything we knew already and tried to form some semblance of a pattern. “Do you know the names of some of the people vying for the position?”

“I’ve heard rumors about a couple.”

“How about Mishka Thiering?”

Peter nodded after a while. “Yes, I recall a few sources have suggested that. What was she—half-demon as well as witch?”

“Daughter of something or someone called ‘Lord of Oblivion.” I smacked my hand over my mouth and let my eyes grow wide. “Oops, I forgot Heaven said we aren’t supposed to say his name. Question: If I say it three times, does he appear behind me?”

“The rituals are a little bit more complicated than that.”

“Oh well, worth asking. So yeah, Mish was his daughter. I guess that technically makes her quarter-demon.”

“Ah. Yes, she would have been a significant threat to whoever is behind this.”

“Well, I suppose that’s why she was so eager to unlock her power,” I said to Nate. “And what she wanted the extra money for.”

He met my gaze, but didn’t answer. I suppose after all his bitchy wife’s betrayals, nothing surprised him anymore.

“So where do we go from here?” Jamie spoke up. “How are we supposed to stop this guy from kidnapping us and stuff?”

I glanced at Jamie, tilted my head to the side, and grinned. “Use you as bait?”

He gave me a mock-glare.

“The solution remains to be seen,” Peter said.

Despite the answers he had provided, we were still mostly screwed.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Details, Details...

I wasn’t interested in repeating everything Peter had said to Heaven, so I stayed behind as the guys went downstairs to confer with her. My excuse was that we had emptied the apartment’s mini-bar, so I was stocking up on the supplies in the conference room bar.

But Peter’s retelling of the events of my birth into vampirism left me jarred. Even after three hundred years, the thought of the dark place and the time directly after it made me shudder.

I saw Pavel and Ecaterina’s children in my mind, tasted their blood on my lips, and cringed at the memory. They were just kids. Little, tiny children...wasn’t their fault their father was a murderer and their mother had no problem hopping in another woman’s bed within weeks of her death. Still, some part of me
enjoyed
it. When I was babbling in madness later and Dragomir explained what had happened, who I’d killed... There was a moment of pure
glee
. Because I’d already taken away the first pieces of the family they’d built after my murder and realizing how my husband was probably hurting in that moment stoked the righteous rage burning in me.

I was a monster. I had no illusions about it.

The best moment was the look on my husband’s face as I stepped into the bedroom we once shared. His eyes widened in disbelief, then alarm, and finally in absolute terror. Grinning with my fangs showing, dress covered in blood—I really made an impression on a guy.

But my delight didn’t last long. The pleasure I took in dismembering and torturing my replacement was overshadowed by that painful, hungry void I’d awoken with. And when my final act as vengeful spouse was complete, and I stood over Pavel’s corpse watching the blood from his exposed entrails seep into the hardwood floor, I didn’t feel peaceful. I didn’t feel righteous.

I didn’t feel anything.

Alone.

I gave my head a shake, blinked hard, and kneeled behind the bar. Whiskey. In massive quantities, it could solve
anything
. I sorted through the bottles and snatched a few containing the hardest liquor. If we had to spend much more time in the basement with Heaven, we might as well be good and hammered.

I stood, liquor bottles cradled in my arms, and I nearly dropped them when the sight of Nate at the door startled me.

“Need some help?” He gestured to the vodka and scotch.

“Nah, I think I can rob the bar on my own.” I grinned. “I’ve had a few years of experience.” Of course, robbing liquors stores for real wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounded in theory, but I tried not to tell people those stories—it ruined the romance of the idea. I passed him, balanced the bottles in my arms, and reached for the door.

“Listen, Zara...”

Oh hell. I
so
didn’t want to do this. Fucking pity—I could put up with a lot of shit, but not that. “‘Blah blah, I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge, blah blah, that must have sucked, yadda yadda yadda,’” I said for him. “There—did that sum it up?”

A faint smile touched his lips and I forgot my irritation as my heart rate sped. “More or less.”

“Well, its water under the bridge, or over the bridge, or wherever that stupid saying claims it goes. The water is where it is supposed to be, so we can move on.”

He took the bottles from me and placed them on the table behind us. The air turned heavy with unspoken expectancy, and I knew it would be too much to expect I’d get to leave without a discussion. With a sigh, I hopped on the table’s edge and waited for him to get on with the apologies.