Blurred Memories (13 page)

But everything was so far
from being fine, Blake couldn’t even find it in himself to laugh—or
to rage at showing himself so weak in front of all of them yet
again.

“
Go to hell,” he muttered,
and stormed out of the room.

He knew, before the door
even banged shut behind him, that one of them would follow. Maybe
both. He didn’t know which one he would prefer—or which one would
be worse. On his third stride he started running. He didn’t stop
until he had climbed the last set of stairs, pushed open the
security door, and stepped out onto the roof of the
hotel.

He dropped to his knees and
looked up. Winds had gathered clouds over the city, and now he
couldn’t see a single star above. He tried to take a breath,
unclench his throat, and relax his constricted chest, but he
couldn’t. He just couldn’t. The sky felt too low, too heavy. It
weighed on him like the ceiling of his cell once had, and he
couldn’t—

“
Blake? Are
you—”

His body reacted before the
gears in his mind could engage. He twisted away from the hand that
was resting on his shoulder and swung his fist as he spun and
rolled away. His closed hand struck Marc’s cheek where he had been
leaning down toward Blake. Marc lost his balance and fell back on
his ass, a stunned look on his face.

Blake’s mind caught up with
the rest of him, and he winced. “Sorry,” fell from his lips by pure
reflex, and he had to battle the instincts that demanded he
prostrate himself this very instant and beg for his Master’s
forgiveness.

Marc palmed his cheek, his
eyes never leaving Blake. “It’s okay,” he said calmly. “No harm
done.”

Marc pushed himself back to
his feet and held out his hand to Blake to help him up. Blake
considered the proffered hand but didn’t take it. His knuckles felt
like they were burning from the impact with Marc’s face. It was
hardly the first time he had hit Marc; they had fought before,
sometimes when sparring turned a notch higher, sometimes to let off
steam and anger when they argued about something. But Blake had
never hit his Master, and it was his Master he had lashed out
at.

Or at least, he rationalized
that he wanted to hit his Master. In truth, there hadn’t been
anything in his mind at the time, only raw fear and anger joined
too close together to differentiate.

“
It was my fault,” Marc
added after a little while. He was still holding his hand out to
Blake. “I shouldn’t have sneaked up on you.”

Blake wanted to raise his
hand and take Marc’s, but try as he might, he couldn’t move a
finger. He looked down, and rather than a closed fist resting on
his thigh, all he could see were deformed fingers. He could
feel
the breaks again, the aching, dull, unrelenting pain of
bones that hadn’t been reset correctly.

It was just the same with
his mind; the veil that had dulled everything for so long had been
lifted with Simon’s spell, but the pieces were not back in their
proper place, and everything still hurt so damn much…

“
Blake… Calm down,
please.”

Marc knelt down in front of
him, close enough that their knees brushed together. His hand
closed over Blake’s and gently pried it open. Four crescents in
Blake’s palm welled up with blood.

There was always so much
blood, always—

“
Childe!”

Blake’s head snapped up. He
met dark eyes, with none of the anger, disappointment, and cruelty
he had expected to see there. Instead, the pain in Marc’s gaze
matched his own. Marc’s hand slipped over his until their fingers
entwined.

“
Blake…” Marc’s voice was
quieter now, no more than a murmur between them. “Talk to me. Tell
me what’s going on in your head. Tell me something,
anything
, please. Let me help you.”

It was the same thing Kate
had asked from him.

Words rose to his lips,
painful yet inescapable.

“
Why did you…give up on
me?”

Abandon me
, was what
had first come to mind, but he refused to be that
pathetic.

Marc shook his head, his
expression reflecting confusion. “Give up? I never gave
up—”

“
You didn’t come for me,”
Blake cut in. His throat felt raw, as if each word cut deep. “You
didn’t try to find me. You gave up. You’re
my Sire
, and
you…you gave up on me.”

* * * *

Had Blake plunged a stake in
Marc’s heart, it wouldn’t have been as painful as hearing those
words. It didn’t help that Marc had blamed himself
before.

“
I didn’t know if you were
still alive,” he murmured. “I couldn’t…” His hand rose of its own
accord and clutched at his chest. “I couldn’t feel you anymore. I
didn’t know if you were alive and—”

“
And you had a new Childe
to take care of.”

“
No!”

Blake recoiled at Marc’s
exclamation, and Marc tried to get a grip on himself
again.

“
No,” he repeated more
quietly. “That had nothing to do with you. We asked Simon to reopen
the breach. He said he didn’t know how, but Kate had him work on it
even after Daniel told them it was too dangerous.”

Blake’s eyes had never
seemed so dark—so dead. “So Simon worked his magic. Kate pushed him
on. And what did
you
do? Where were you? You weren’t there
when I was brought back.”

Guilt swept through Marc
again, dulling everything he felt.

“
I wanted to stay with
them.” To Marc’s own ears, he sounded like he was making excuses,
and he hated himself for it. “Daniel wouldn’t let me, so
I—”

“
You take orders from your
Childer now?” Blake interrupted again, this time with a sneer. “And
I’m supposed to believe that? Do you think I’m really that
stupid?”

“
No, Blake, it’s
not—”

But Blake wasn’t listening.
He pushed himself to his feet and looked down at where Marc knelt
in front of him. The scent of anger and pain wafted from Blake, and
Marc’s insides twisted until he felt like he might throw
up.

“
If you are tired of me,”
Blake said tonelessly, “all you have to do is say so. You don’t
have to pretend. You don’t have to take care of me. Maybe I’ll be
better on my own.”

Marc could hardly believe
this was happening. He wasn’t tired of Blake or pretending
anything, and he
wanted
to help Blake, wanted to help him
get better. Before Marc could figure out where to begin, however,
Blake was already walking away, leaving Marc confused and
hurt.

What else could he have
done? Jumped through the first breach he found after Blake’s
disappearance? Marc had thought about it. He had even seriously
considered it. But what good would it have done? He didn’t know the
demon dimension, and even if he had known where Blake was kept, how
could he have hoped to fight his way there and free
Blake?

You could have tried
,
a little voice that sounded a lot like Blake accused.
You could
have looked for Jen like Kate did. You could have made her show you
the way
.

Marc’s heart ached. Could he
really have helped Blake? Could he have spared him decades of
torture?

Why hadn’t he even
tried?

More importantly, what could
he do to make up for it now?

Chapter 11

Every fiber of Kate yearned
to go after Blake and Marc. Her heart
demanded
that she join
them and help in any way she could. Her mind, however, had already
reasserted this simple truth: she couldn’t help. Whenever Blake was
agitated like this, her presence only made things worse. Marc could
help. He would. She would be more helpful if she stayed out of the
way—even if her heart broke from it.

“
Are we continuing or
what?” Jen asked, and she sounded bored.

“
We will,” Daniel said in
the same cool voice Kate remembered from before he had been turned
into a vampire; he had lost his calm and his job as head of the
squad then, at least for a while, but now that he had found his way
again, he was the same Daniel she used to know. She couldn’t help
but hope that Blake would turn out the same way. When Daniel looked
at her, his eyes were clear, with none of the gold flames that
would betray anger or excitement.

“
Go check what Simon is
doing,” he told her. “It didn’t take him that long to prepare a
truth spell last time.”

Kate started for the door,
pausing briefly when Jen said, “You might want to have him do the
spell he did for Blake on me. The one that’ll stop demons from
being able to find me.”

There was a hopeful edge to
her words, and Kate glanced at Daniel. The briefest of nods
confirmed that he, too, thought this might be a good idea. They
should have thought of it earlier.

When Kate reached Simon’s
room, she found out that one of them
had
thought of
it.

“
I just need a couple more
minutes,” he told her, his gaze flicking toward her before he
focused on the array of ingredients spread out in front of him on
the desk. “I was trying to adapt the spell I did for Blake. I don’t
know what kind of magic she has in her, so I thought, if I had her
drink…”

He never finished his
sentence, his eyes narrowing suddenly and his tongue peeking
between his lips in concentration as he carefully poured two drops
of a silvery substance into a small jar. Kate understood his
reasoning well enough, though, so she didn’t press him for an
explanation. Besides, mentioning Blake caused Kate’s worry to swell
again. Were Blake and Marc back in their room? She wished the
situation with Jen could wait, but she understood why Daniel wanted
answers now. Jen might have time-sensitive information, and the
sooner she divulged it, the better their chances of being able to
use it.

“
All right,” Simon said,
squinting at the jar he held in front of his face. “That should
work at least until the next full moon, and I’ll make something
more permanent if she’s still alive by then. Now the truth
spell…”

The rest of the preparations
only took seconds. With the jar in one hand and a small bag of
herbs in the other, Simon stood and followed Kate back to the
office they used for interrogations. When they entered, Marc and
Daniel turned to look at them, both with their arms crossed and
wearing matching frowns.

“
Where’s Blake?” Kate
blurted out, at the same time as Daniel said to Simon, “Finally.
Get to work. I want to know if she’s telling the truth.”

Kate was still looking at
Marc with concern. He shook his head once with a meaningful glance
to the others in the room, and Kate supposed he didn’t want to talk
in front of them. It didn’t alleviate her concerns, however.
Beckoning to Marc with her hand, she indicated for him to join her
at the back of the room, and after a brief pause he did.

“
Should I go talk to him?”
she asked in a whisper.

Marc grimaced. “I think he
needs time alone. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”

“
Okay.”

But as Kate clutched Marc’s
hand, she couldn’t think that any of it was okay. Like Blake, she
would rather not have had to deal with Jen for more than a summary
execution. The fact that Jen had upset Blake even more after his
relapse near the breach only made Kate want to reach for a stake to
end Jen’s life—and her lies.

Except…she wasn’t lying now,
was she? She
couldn’t
lie, not when Simon had done that
spell on her.

Frowning, Kate focused on
what Jen was saying.

“
Tell me about that prison
again,” Daniel demanded. “Repeat what you said before we put you
under spell.”

Jen let out a long-suffering
sigh but complied.

“
It’s where they take the
prisoners they hope to turn traitor,” she said, and as detached as
she tried to act, there was now a hitch in her voice that hadn’t
been present earlier. “It’s where they held me. And where they held
Blake, too.”

An icy wave slid over Kate,
leaving her mind and heart frozen. She was glad suddenly that Blake
had left the room. If Jen’s mere presence had been enough to
agitate him, she didn’t want to know how he would react to hearing
that his prison—what had been a literal hell for him for so
long—was on the other side of the breach they hadn’t yet managed to
close.

And still…he would have to
be told. This was too important.

“
How many people are
there?” Daniel asked after he had absorbed the news. “Humans,
vampires and demons.”

Jen shrugged. “It varies.
Every time I was there, the number was different. But it’s never
been less than twenty prisoners at any one time. And sometimes
twice as many demons.”

The number resonated through
Kate like a deep gong. Twenty prisoners. Twenty people who, at this
very moment, were being tortured the same way Blake had. Her
stomach roiled and she turned away, a hand rising to cover her
mouth. She stumbled out of the room and just had time to reach the
nearby restrooms before she started to retch violently.