Dayhunter (22 page)

With a shrug, I made a show of dusting off my hands as I rose to my feet. I was on my own. “Fine. You can have the island. I’m sure this is the only way you can tolerate being surrounded by humans.”

“I have to know, Mira,” Rowe began, halting me before I could take my first step. “Do you regret your decision?”

“No,” I said, far too quickly to be convincing.

A low chuckle rippled from Rowe as he shook his head at me.

There was no question about what decision he was referring to. He had given me a chance to change sides, to help the naturi in exchange for their protection. I chose my kind without hesitation, but within minutes questioned whether it had truly been the wisest choice. If anything, I realized that I should be searching for a third option instead of trying to figure out which was the lesser of the two evils.

“No? You’re pleased, yet you run away to the one place in this wretched city where there’s not a single vampire to be found?” he said. Rowe threaded a loose stand of hair behind his ear, keeping it from blocking his one good eye. Between his long black hair and the leather eye patch, he still reminded me of a pirate straight from a romance novel.

A smirk twisted on my lips as I looked up into the tree at my enemy. “I like the view of the city from here.”

His head snapped up to look out across the island. Another low laugh drifted down from the tree to me. From the ground, the only thing that could be seen in all directions was the massive brick wall that edged the island like a piece of industrial strength lace. I wanted to keep him laughing. It meant that he wasn’t trying to kill me. Rowe’s laughter was better than Nerian’s. My old tormentor’s laughter haunted me, skipping back from memories that were sealed away under blocks of steel and concrete. Nerian’s laughter was the sound of madness and pain.

“I made a mistake with you,” Rowe unexpectedly announced, again stopping me from walking back toward the gate I’d used to enter the cemetery.

“What? When you helped Nerian torture me? Or when you tried to grab me in Egypt?” My indifferent, easygoing tone withered. “No, wait! You mean when you threatened to poison me in London.”

“No, none of that was a mistake,” he replied with a wave of his hand. “I mean when we first met.”

“Machu Picchu,” I supplied. I honestly didn’t remember him being there, but he’d said on more than one occasion that he had. And maybe it was true. There were a lot of things that were blurry about my two-week captivity on that mountain. I might have blocked him out.

Rowe dropped down from the tree branch he had been standing on, landing only a few feet from where I stood. I immediately darted backward, putting more than twenty feet between us, and even that still felt too close. Surprisingly, he lifted both hands, palms out, giving the international sign that “It’s all good.” Of course, I was hoping that was what the gesture meant in naturi.

“You honestly don’t remember me,” he said softly, staring at me with a strange intensity. His large black wings were hidden now and he vaguely reminded me of a somewhat muscular elf, without the pointed ears, of course.

“No, I don’t remember you,” I snapped, pacing to my left then back again. The ground was sloped and the grass was slick under my feet. Not the best location for a fight. “There’s a lot about Machu Picchu I don’t care to remember.”

“We met in Spain,” Rowe corrected.

I jerked to a halt, my lips parting at this sudden bit of unexpected news. Had he been among those who kidnapped me from Spain and took me to Peru?

“It’s been more than six centuries,” he continued. “I looked different, but you haven’t changed much. Your hair seemed longer, and you were human. Sort of.”

“You’re lying,” I whispered, shaken to my very soul. He knew me when I was human. That didn’t seem possible. Was I a magnet for these twisted creatures? Sadira had found me living on a small farm in Greece, the nearest village almost a day’s walk away. And now Rowe claimed to have known me during my brief human years.

“It was four hours from sunset and you were sitting near the edge of a lake,” Rowe stated. His voice grew harder and colder with each new detail. His hands fell limp back at his sides. “You sat in the sun wearing a green dress. A strand of black pearls was woven through your hair.”

While my memory of that day had faded during the long stretch of years, his memory remained crisp and fresh. But there was no question of the day he was recalling. I had worn that dress just once and then burned it, destroying the last bits of my human life. Rowe had met me on the last day that I was human.

A fine trembling started in my fingers and a knot jerked tight in the pit of my stomach. I started to shake my head, denying what he was saying, when the fog around my own memory started to clear. A man had walked up out of the nearby woods. He was tall and lean, with bright green eyes, the same shade as wet grass after a summer storm. His shoulder-length hair was a pale blond almost like milky sunlight.

“I warned you…that the landowner didn’t—”

“Like trespassers,” Rowe finished. He leaned against the tree he had been perched in only moments ago. A soft laugh escaped him as he tilted his head back, staring up at the canopy. “I would never have guessed you were talking about a flock of vampires.”

“I was only trying to keep you from being dinner,” I replied. I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper as my mind struggled to comprehend this information.

“And I let you slip through my fingers,” he muttered, looking at me again. “I came out of the woods because I sensed you. Something strange sitting on the edge of the lake. Not naturi. And yet, not quite human. A little bundle of energy as warm and sweet as a zephyr.”

“Human,” I firmly said. “I was human.”

Rowe shrugged his broad shoulders at my comment. “Maybe.” His eyes then narrowed on me and a frown pulled at his lips. “You managed to convince me back then. ‘I wanted to see the sun one last time,’” he mimicked in a high falsetto voice that sounded nothing like me.

“It was the last time I ever saw the sun,” I confirmed.

“I thought you were dying,” he barked, pushing off the tree, but he didn’t approach me. He stared at me, his fists clenched at his sides. “Humans were dropping dead all over the land. I thought you would too.”

That was part of the reason Sadira offered to change me. The Black Plague had swept through Europe for several years, and she began to fear that I wouldn’t be able to escape it. If I caught the illness, she could not heal me and would have had to watch me die. So she offered to change me into a nightwalker. I’d recently discovered that there was much more to it than that, of course, but none of that was a part of my own memories, so to me Sadira remained my maker alone.

“No, I had another kind of death in mind,” I murmured.

“Aarrgh!”
Rowe shouted, shoving both of his hands angrily through his hair as he took one step toward me then back over to the tree. “If I’d done something that day—anything—so much could have been different. If I had just killed you then, or taken you away from those vampires, everything would have been different,” he ranted.

It was an interesting viewpoint that I had not considered. If I had not been at Machu Picchu, the naturi would have most likely opened the door and returned to the earth. Things would have been vastly different if I had not lived. After looking back on so many of my seemingly harmless decisions that had gone horribly wrong during the past several days, it was nice to be faced with someone dealing with the same horror. Six hundred years ago, if Rowe had killed a somewhat strange human, his wife-queen would be walking the earth beside him along with the rest of the naturi horde. They would not be facing the battle that was looming now. A broad smile danced across my lips and brightened my eyes. I wasn’t the only one to royally screw up without realizing it until it was far too late to fix.

“We would be free,” he said in a low voice full of wistful longing.

My smile withered. “And I would be dead. Countless humans and nightwalkers and lycans would be dead. The bori would be free. The old war would start again,” I said, my voice gaining strength for the first time since I had seen Rowe.

“You think the bori would be free if the naturi returned?” he countered, leaning against the tree again. He seemed to have gotten over his moment of frustration, but then, he’d been dealing with that little bit of truth for more than five hundred years.

“Of course. It’s the only option any non-naturi would have left.” I took a couple steps closer to him, shoving my fingers into the front pockets of my leather pants. “When the nightwalkers discover that we have no way of defeating you, we would find a way to set the bori free, your one and only equal in power.”

“It’s a sad future you paint,” Rowe said with a shake of his head.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said, a wide grin returning to my face. “You could walk away now. Give up these plans to break the seal forever and let the naturi return to obscurity.”

To my surprise, Rowe snorted again and folded his arms over his chest. “You would protect me from my kind?”

I smiled. It was the same offer he had made to me nights ago. Change sides. Betray your own people. “Of course.”

“I was serious, Mira. You don’t belong with them.”

“I am nightwalker, Rowe. It’s the only place I belong.”

He sighed, then frowned at me as if disappointed. “Regardless, getting rid of me won’t solve your problems.” I noticed that as he spoke, his eyes darted back toward the wall over my shoulder. Toward the Coven and the female naturi within the Great Hall.

“Probably not, but it would be a great starting point,” I conceded. “Of course, I’m getting the feeling that I should start with the female on that island you keep looking at. A friend of yours? Or maybe she keeps you warm at night, considering the little woman is stuck on the other side.”

There was no mistaking the snarl that jumped from the back of Rowe’s throat. The light banter we had enjoyed early was over and it was now time to get down to business. I just hoped I survived the next few minutes. While I could comfortably contend that killing him would halt the naturi’s attempts to break the seal, my death would also ensure that nightwalkers had no way of reforming the seal or closing the door again if the naturi actually succeeded.

“You know of her?” he demanded, to which my grin only grew. Rowe took a couple steps toward me, and I matched him by stepping backward. The air seemed to swell with energy. The wind picked up, causing the trees to violently sway. I chanced a glance up at the night sky to see the clouds churning and bubbling like witch’s brew. The stars had been blotted out and a low roll of thunder growled in the distance.

“I can sense her on the island, yet I cannot reach her,” he admitted, and it was more than a little reassuring to discover that at least the naturi couldn’t break through our protective barriers. “Nightwalkers control that island.”

“Venice belongs to us,” I said. “It has belonged to us for centuries and it will remain ours. Are you surprised there are places in this world that you cannot go?” I was playing with fire when it came to taunting Rowe, but playing with fire was what I did best.

“Who do you hold on that island?” he demanded, ignoring my remarks. “She’s a captive.”

Something in his voice gave me pause. A slight hesitation or a breathless pause that could be easily overlooked. He had intended it to sound like a statement, but it didn’t. Not only was he unsure of who was on the island, but he was also unsure whether she was actually a hostage.

“Now that is an interesting question,” I slowly said. “Unfortunately, you’re the only living naturi I know. The rest tend to die quickly upon meeting me.”

Thunder rumbled again, louder this time, the storm drawing closer. Rowe growled as his arm shot up into the air. Less than a second later a bolt of lightning plummeted to the ground, striking no more than three feet from where I stood. I jumped away, landing in a heap before rolling back to my feet. The air still tingled with the electricity hanging in the atmosphere along with the scent of burnt ozone.

Rowe’s hand shook slightly as he lowered it back to his side. There was no missing the intent look on his face as he watched me. I was getting a firsthand look at the powers of the wind naturi. Not only could they fly, but apparently they could also control the weather. I would never survive a lightning strike, and I knew he could kill me before I could incinerate him.

“Hmmm,” I mocked, desperately trying to hide my mounting fear behind sarcasm. “Killing me may solve some of your problems, but it won’t help you discover the identity of the little naturi hiding on the island.”

“Hiding? What do you mean ‘hiding’?”

I laughed at him, but swallowed the sound when Rowe started to raise his arm again. Lightning darted among the rolling clouds, illuminating each black giant for a blink of an eye before plunging all back into darkness again. Gritting my teeth, I took a desperate chance. I ran straight at Rowe. The air tingled and the ground shook as another lightning bolt struck the ground directly behind me.

Slamming his back into the tree, I wrapped my fists in his red shirt and leaned in so my nose nearly touched his. “You may be able to control the lightning, but I am willing to bet you can’t survive a lightning strike. So the question becomes, how badly do you want to see me dead?”

“That’s an interesting wager,” he replied. His green eyes narrowed on mine and a smirk twisted his lips.

There was no mistaking the surge of energy that crackled and snapped around us. He was pulling the energy from the earth and I could sense it; something that should not be happening. Nightwalkers lost all connection with the earth when we were reborn.

The sensation from the building power was both amazing and painful, biting at my flesh and gnawing on my bones. The energy was trying to find a way into my body, but it was at odds with what I was. Nightwalkers were creatures of blood magic. We couldn’t do earth magic. Or at least that’s what I had always been led to believe.

“Of course, we both know that killing me won’t get you any closer to finding out about your missing female,” I said, just trying to buy a few seconds. “And we’ve both seen what a joke kidnapping me is.”