Isadora (Masters Among Monsters Book 2) (13 page)

“I do not know why I bother repeating myself when you will merely ignore me come first light. The sun, it will kill you, so stop testing my word.”

“Why? Why does it harm us? Why will you not say?”

The stranger stared at his feet and, after several seconds, raised his eyes back to Vasilios. “It is not yet time for you to know.”

Vasilios stepped closer to the man and took his hands in his. “Why will you not tell me? You have said that this, what we are, is a gift. And it truly is. I am faster, stronger, more aware than I have ever been—”

“Yes. But that comes with a price…” the man said, his voice trailing off.

“If given as a gift, why would a price be required?”

Because it wasn’t a gift,
Leo thought.
It’d never been a gift. It had been a curse. The man had lied.
 

Leo remembered the journals he’d come across while researching the myths. The Scriptures of Delphi, the tale of the man Ambrogio, who’d been cursed by the Greek gods Apollo, Artemis & Hades.
 

Apollo—god of the sun.

AS THAT ALARMING thought echoed in his mind, the memory vanished and Vasilios ripped his lips from his.

“Alarming indeed, is it not?”

As Leo’s head pounded, he placed a hand on Vasilios’s chest to steady himself and said, “I’m not—”

Vasilios laughed then, and the sound made his firm body vibrate. “Oh, I know you are not
him
. But, somehow, you are connected. I have seen through Alasdair how your blood burns him—and likely would the rest of us—as if you are the sun itself. The light I saw shine in the temple with Alasdair that day was like a beacon to me, and the final piece of this wondrous little puzzle is your uncanny resemblance.”

Leo’s eyes widened. He couldn’t quite comprehend what Vasilios was saying.
 

“Don’t be alarmed,
agóri
, but that curse you read? I believe you and your little friends who are currently locked up in my Adjudication Room were sent here to break it. And the only way to break it is to kill us all. Something you yourself admitted you were told to do.”

 
“But…but…
what
? The Greek gods are a myth.”

“So are vampires,” Vasilios pointed out, tugging on the cuff. “I plan to present you at The Walk in due time and make you mine in every way conceivable. If your god is up there, I am sure he will soon show his hand. Because, as of now, his pawn has become my queen.”

ELIAS PACED THE hardwood floor of the strange room he and Paris had been dumped inside, certain he was close to wearing a mark into it. He thought he’d heard it called the Adjudication Room, and as he scanned the studded, black walls, he wondered what exactly went on there.

Unlike Paris, when that asshole Alasdair had zapped them in there, he’d remained alert and conscious—something he’d been told long ago meditation would help with “when the time comes.”
 

He wished he could summon the voice from earlier, the one he’d had dreams of back when this had all begun. But that wasn’t the way of it. Their path was to be carried out on the faith and the belief of their ancestors, that of their gods.
With a few jumpstart visions courtesy of the higher-ups.

His mindset had changed since he’d started though. He felt…unsure. Back when Isadora had left him and the visions had first begun, he’d felt inspired. He’d clung to the idea that a mission was set in place for him and that was his course in life, a way to get over the fact that she’d left him. And when Leo and Paris had arrived and the dreams started to come to fruition, he’d been vindicated. His path, his course, it was set. What he hadn’t realized was that
she
had been the trigger that had started it all.

He closed his eyes and thought about where this would end.
 

With his death? With Paris’s?
 

It seemed the most likely outcome. But that wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He’d done everything he’d been told. Trained, researched, and waited for years. He’d been patient, and now, it seemed like he hadn’t been told the entire fucking story.
 

What would his reward be for having turned his friend against him, for having his other friend captured, and for having tortured Isadora?
Death?

He pressed his fingers against his eyelids.
Is it so much to ask for an answer of some kind?

No, it is not. But that is not how this works, Elias. You know that…

Elias opened his eyes and searched the room for the source of the voice, but he was alone save for Paris.

 
“Ugh…” A groan came from down on the black rug in the center of the room, where Paris was currently sprawled out.
 

Fuck. What a goddamn disaster.
 

He couldn’t believe how cocked up this had become in the last hour, and all because of fucking Leo. They had to be controlling him. It was the only logical explanation. That and the fact that
he
hadn’t had a chance to explain things and had looked like a fucking nutjob when things had started to unravel.
 

Would’ve been fucking nice to have been given a heads-up that Leo had encountered the vampire he was sent to—

“Elias…”

The faint sound had him rounding towards Paris, who was struggling to sit.
 

“Try not to move too fast or you’ll see your breakfast a second time today.”

Paris brought his knees up to his chest and pushed his long hair behind his ears, lowering his forehead to his legs. “I feel like shit.”

“Yeah, I know. It’ll stop in a minute.”

Paris looked up at him, his round eyes searching his for answers. “What the fuck’s going on, Elias?” Then he looked around the weird-ass room. “Where are we?”

Elias also scanned the room for the hundredth time. He figured that it was a torture room of some sort, but he didn’t think telling Paris was the best option. “If I had to guess, I’d say we’re in some kind of holding room.”

Paris squinted at him. “Ho-holding room?”

Elias walked over to the padded wall and pressed his palm against it. Leather, just as he’d suspected, and soundproof.
Or perhaps…scream-proof?
 

“Yes. There’s a bathroom but no other door.”

As he trailed his fingers over the surface, his gaze fastened on the stud. An archaic coin?
Fuck
, that one coin alone was worth anywhere between five thousand to twenty, and as he stared down the curve of the wall, the sheer amount of them was impressive.

Who studs their walls with ancient artifacts? Ostentatious fucks.

“Elias? Where’s Leo? I thought I saw him before…” Paris trailed off.
 

Before what?
was probably what he was thinking.

“You did. Something’s happened to him though.” Elias heard Paris moving around and turned, finding him getting to his feet.

“What? What’s happened to him?”

He sighed, frustrated that he didn’t actually know. But it had to be something,
right
? Leo wouldn’t have offered up their lives unless he’d had no other choice, and that was exactly what he’d done. Then he remembered his friend’s words. “
I made a choice. The only one I could. I chose to live.”
 

When he’d questioned Leo as he’d dragged him down to the two assholes—who wanted to kill him, no doubt—he’d been quick to state that he’d bargained himself with their lives in mind. Yet, as Elias looked to the ceiling, where an ominous metal hook hung in hostile surveillance, he wondered if Leo had been duped. Because, from where he was standing, their lives seemed anything but guaranteed.

PARIS FELT LIKE he’d survived a tornado, and though he’d come out on the other side, his head was still fucking jumbled.

Elias was standing across the unfamiliar room, staring at the ceiling, and when he followed his gaze, the sight made the hair on the back of his neck rise. He tried to clear the fog inside his brain and remember everything that’d happened prior to waking up wherever the hell he now was.
 

Two things were playing over though. Elias’s claim that the woman in his office was…
a vampire.
And Leo and his new guy appearing from out of nowhere, before Leo’s earnest eyes stared down at him as he whispered,
“I’m sorry, Paris. So sorry.”

“Where’s the woman, Elias?”

Elias brought his gaze to his, and Paris raised his chin, refusing to back down.
 

Elias Fontana was an intimidating man. His appearance was deceiving. Attractive in an intellectual way. His dark hair, which sported silver flecks at the temples, combined with his odd eye color drew attention.

When people caught sight of the glasses, heard his profession, and saw the immaculate suits he always wore, they assumed he was bookish. A nerd at heart—which he was. But beneath that exterior was someone fierce and stern. A man who liked control. Both he and Leo had realized that the instant they’d sat down in his first class.
 

Friends from the moment they’d met, Paris and Leo would study together, hang out together, and troll the night scene down at the local gay bar on the weekends. One other thing they used to do to pass the time was weave all kinds of fantasies around their university professor. Until they’d gotten to know him better as adults, of course. That’s when it’d become clear that Elias was drawn to women. Something the two of them had secretly commiserated over because they’d agreed—Elias was hot.

“She’s not a woman. I already told you that.”

Paris shoved his hands into the pockets of his black skinny jeans and tried not to think about the way his stomach had just clenched at Elias’s words. “Cut the crap, Elias. You need to start talking, okay? This isn’t funny. It’s serious shit.”

Elias lowered his arm and walked over to him, and unintentionally, Paris backed up fast enough that he hit the wall.

“Paris…” Elias appealed.

“Stay there.”

“You’re scared of me?”

Paris wasn’t sure. No, scratch that. At the moment, he
was
fucking scared.
 

“You haven’t really given me a reason not to be, have you?”

“No, I suppose not. I really didn’t want to tell you this way.”

“Tell me what?” he shouted.

When Elias’s eyes widened, Paris realized that it was the first time he’d ever raised his voice around, or to, this man.

“Okay,” Elias said slowly. So slowly that it felt like a warning.
 

But what about? The fact that he really was a crazed lunatic who tortured women? Or that he was becoming pissed off? Either way, Paris wasn’t about to apologize for standing up for himself.
 

“Do you remember when we first met?”

Paris nodded. “Yes. I was running late to class because my mother got lost. We’d just moved to the area. I barely made it before you locked the door.”

Elias grimaced, and he wondered why. Sure, that day hadn’t been his most shining moment, but they’d come a long way since. He’d aced Elias’s classes, just as Leo had, and they’d both excelled in the advanced courses offered for extra credit. Now, as adults, they all worked together on some of the most extraordinary exhibits to come into the country.

“Exactly. I was also running late that day, because
we
were meant to meet. Just like you were meant to meet Leo. The three of us—it was all prearranged. We just didn’t know it.”

Thoroughly confused, he only managed to say, “Huh?”

“That night, after our first day. I had a dream about you two.”

He gave a disbelieving snort. “Come on, Elias.”

“It’s true. And the day before classes started, the woman… Well, that vampire you met? She’d just broken up with me.”

Paris pulled his hands out of his pockets and scrubbed them over his face. “You kidnapped that woman because she broke up with you over ten years ago?”

Elias walked forward, adamantly shaking his head. “You’re not listening.”

Paris pushed off the wall and met him toe-to-toe. “I
am
listening. You’re telling me you used to date a fucking vampire. Got it. And that you had a dream about Leo and me the night we all first met because we were
meant
to meet? That’s a little fucking insane, don’t you think?”