Prophecy: Child of Light (5 page)

“Feeling better?”

She didn’t answer his question. She just stared at him and curled up, holding her knees tightly. She finally realised that he was standing between her and the only exit. She hadn’t been strong enough to fight him earlier, and now the situation was far worse. All she could do was wait for the drug to leave her system and see if an opportunity presented itself. Hopefully, he would reveal why he’d abducted her too, and what he’d seen in her blood that had startled him so much.

He took a step towards her.

“Do you have a name?”

She glared at him. He should be the one answering her questions, not the other way around. Biting her tongue, she resisted the desire to say something. He’d slip up and then she could escape. How the hell had he made it in and out of her house? She wanted to ask him, wanted to hear his explanation. There were guardsmen on the gates and stationed around the grounds, and there were nearly one hundred members of her family within the mansion walls at all times. It was impossible that he’d managed to find her and then take her without someone seeing him. Then again, she’d escaped easily in order to hunt.

“Who is your mother?”

Her frown intensified and her gaze dropped to rest on the ground.

“My mother is Iona, leader of my bloodline,” she said without looking at him.

“No. I meant your real mother,” he said and she raised her eyes to meet his.

She knew she looked confused; she couldn’t help it. What was he talking about? Iona was her mother. He smiled at her, or at least she thought it was a smile. The corners of his mouth barely moved, but his look softened. She felt as though he was mocking her, treating her as if she was a child like the rest of her family did.

“Do not be frightened.”

She got to her feet, pushing her fear down inside of her and keeping her expression empty as she glared at him. She wasn’t frightened. She’d never be frightened of one of his bloodline. But his questions, they seemed to burn in her mind, making it spin and ache while she searched for answers to them. Who was her mother? It was Iona. She was the Chosen Daughter of her household, sister to Arkalus, the Chosen Son of Caelestis. But this vampire of Aurorea had said she wasn’t. He’d said he wanted to know who her real mother was. Real mother?

Her brows furrowed as she struggled to remember something. It seemed just out of reach, too far away for her to grab hold of and bring into focus. Her real mother? Who was she? A blurred image flickered in front of her eyes and then slipped away before she could make sense of it.

“I want to go home now,” she said in a pleading tone, her eyes meeting his again. He looked at her as though she was insane for asking.

“There is no going home.” He took another step towards her. “You are not safe there anymore.”

“I’m safe in my household. It’s here I’m not safe.” She moved backwards, trying to maintain the distance between them. It hadn’t worked before, and it wasn’t going to work now. Reaching out behind her, she silently cursed when her hands met the cold walls of the room.

He sighed.

It made her look at him. When he made no move to come closer, she couldn’t stop her eyes from roaming over his face. The lights overhead made him sickly pale, even paler than he should have been. His eyes were still as green as she remembered them. They were clear and rich, sparkling with intelligence as he looked at her. His black hair was tousled and spiked, neater now than it had been when they’d first met and longer than she recalled. He had fine brows, and a slim nose that made him look regal. Her eyes dropped to his clothes. They were elegant. He wore a delicately embroidered deep red jacket that extended to his knees, with shiny gold buttons. She skimmed over his tight black trousers to his highly polished black boots.

He looked like a guard, but she got the impression that he was more than that. The status of guard seemed too low and common for him. He was something else. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing as he questioned her, keeping his voice gentle and soothing, and ensuring he kept enough distance to put her at ease. He had entered her home and stolen her, clearly without raising the alarm since he didn’t seem in a hurry or at all flustered by how long things were taking.

The way he held himself strengthened her belief that he couldn’t be a guard. Guards of all the pure bloodlines were proud creatures, but this man’s poise went beyond pride. He held his head high, his eyes betraying how sure of himself he was. He wasn’t slouching and there was an air of wisdom about him. She got the feeling that he could handle any situation with ease, no matter how dangerous it was. He was older than her, his eyes told her that, but she couldn’t tell how old.

“Your family had reasons for not letting you out. You disobeyed them, and now you are not safe anywhere.”

The sound of his voice snapped her out of her thoughts. The strange sense of calm her perusal of him had given her vanished and fear crept in again. She looked into his eyes to see if what he was saying was true. How was she supposed to trust him? He’d kidnapped her. For all she knew this could be a ruse to get her to do something for him, to make her lose faith in her family.

She backed against the wall as he advanced on her, his movements slow and steady as he closed the gap between them. Her time was up. She could see in his eyes that he was tired of taking things slowly.

She closed her eyes instinctively when he came to a halt in front of her and drew her hair away from her neck. He leaned towards the place where he’d marked her and a low purr rumbled through his chest.

“Who is your sire? If you do not have a mother,” he whispered the words into her ear.

Her sire?

She struggled again, a frown flickering on her brow. She searched her memories for the slightest clue as to the answer to his question.

“It is Iona,” she answered with all the confidence she could find in her now trembling body.

He pulled back and looked at her, shaking his head as he did so. “You have no marks, but mine.”

Her hand automatically moved to her neck. It was true. She had no other marks on her neck. She’d never realised it until the day that her maid, Serenity, had told her, and since that day, she’d been thankful that she didn’t have a reflection so she couldn’t see it for herself. The questions that had arisen in her mind still plagued her. She’d asked herself countless times how it was possible that she could have a sire and no marks. There was no other way of creating a vampire that she knew of. She’d scoured the library archives over and over again, searching for a book that would give her the answer. There had to be another way. She was a vampire after all.

“I could tell you.”

His silken voice aroused her interest and she almost nodded. Could he really tell her? Was this another trick? How could he tell her how she came about, how she became a vampire?

His hands grasped hold of her upper arms and panic rose up inside her when he neared her neck. She tensed and screwed her eyes shut when his teeth penetrated her throat in the same place he’d bitten her before. She wriggled against him, trying to get her arms free so she could push him away, but he only held her tighter.

Valentine frowned and bit down harder on her neck, drawing her blood into his mouth and bracing himself while he waited for the images to hit him.

Nothing.

His teeth retracted.

It wasn’t possible that she had the strength to block her memories from him. He’d easily seen the visions she held in her blood when he’d bitten her before. She hadn’t put up a fight. How had she blocked him this time?

He moved back a fraction to look at her and didn’t have time to react when her feet came up. They pressed hard into his stomach and propelled him backwards through the air. His breath left him as he slammed into the far wall and dropped to his knees, his teeth gritted.

When his body finally shut down the pain, he raised his eyes to look at her.

She was gone.

He hurried to his feet and swung around to face the now open door.

Not pausing to think, he began after her. He couldn’t let her reach her family’s mansion. If she made it there, then they’d both be dead. His family wouldn’t want to hear any of the excuses that he could think of. Kalinor wouldn’t believe him if he said that she had been the danger he’d sensed. He would only see that he had abducted the child of the prophecy. When she told the two families of the questions he’d asked, he would be condemned to death.

They’d both die.

But it couldn’t happen could it? Not if the things her blood had shown him were true.

He took a deep breath of fresh air as his feet hit the road outside the warehouse. She wasn’t far ahead of him and he knew exactly which direction she was going to head in.

Running after her through the dark deserted streets, he kept his senses fixed on her and ducked down a side road. If he were quick enough, he would be able to cut her off before she made it half the distance to her house. He ducked down another alley and smiled when he came back out onto the road she was running down.

She ground to a halt the moment she saw him, her expression hardening as she realised he was again blocking her path.

She kept still, obviously waiting for him to make a move.

Relaxing, he straightened up and raked his eyes over her. She was fast, and strong. He’d not met a female as strong as her before. The way she’d thrown him across the room was impressive. She had power too, enough to stop him from seeing things in her blood. What else was she hiding from him?

He smiled inside when she continued to stand before him in a fighting stance, her fists clenched while she stood with one foot in front of the other in the weakly lit street. He listened to the sound of her heavy breathing as it cut through the silence. It was getting late. The sun would be rising soon. He was running out of time to convince her that everything she had thought was safe, was gone, replaced with a death sentence.

She frowned at him, clearly wondering why he wasn’t making a move. He could almost see the question flickering in her dark eyes. His gaze wandered downwards. The long black nightdress she wore clung to her body, not hiding anything from the imagination. Her feet were bare. He gave a thought to the clothes that were still at the warehouse with the rest of his things. He should have realised that she wasn’t going to make any of this easy. Not that it was easy. Going against his family was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but his instincts had told him it was the right thing.

And blood never lies.

He raised his eyes back to her face. She cleared her hair away from her eyes, pushing it back over her shoulders and revealing herself fully to him. She still looked heavenly.

“Show me your true face.” The words left his lips before he even had time to consider what he was asking or why he wanted to see it.

He was surprised when she did as he’d asked. The bones of her face shifted smoothly, her teeth elongating and sharpening, and her eyes changing to emerald green. She was a Caelestis then. No doubt about that.

She hissed and flexed her fingers while her claws extended.

He didn’t bother changing. He had already satisfied her curiosity about the real him back at the cemetery. There was no need to reveal his demon face again. He stared at her. She moved her weight from one foot to the other, waiting for him to make a move.

When he didn’t, she broke the silence.

She slid gracefully out of her vampire guise and raised her chin. “Who do you think I am?”

He could hear the nerves in her voice. It trembled. If she’d had a heartbeat, it would have been rocketing, sending his every instinct into overdrive and making desire scream through him. The way she was reacting to him made him feel a ghost of that, only a hair’s breadth away from what he would have felt had she been human. He wanted to push her, wanted to make her frightened so he could feed off the feeling of power it gave him, but it would get him nowhere and time was running out.

“Why did you take me from my family? I know you’re not one of them. I know you have a reason for kidnapping me and I want to know what it is.” She took a step towards him.

She had nerve. She may have some power, but he could easily defeat her in a fight. She was young, inexperienced. She’d proven that earlier tonight when she’d thought she could stand her ground against him and not answer his questions.

“I have a reason, yes.” He took a step towards her, showing her that her manoeuvre hadn’t frightened him as she’d intended it to.

Her lips compressed and her nostrils flared as she glared at him. She was young, definitely young, and probably no older in vampire years than she looked. She pushed her hair out of her face again, flicking it over her shoulders. There was such a spark of defiance in her and he didn’t know whether she really wasn’t scared of him, or whether she just had great command over her body. Now that he was closer to her, she seemed calmer and more relaxed. She wasn’t trembling any more. She was standing with a resolute expression on her face that said she was going to get an answer to her question. He was willing to give her one, but he knew she wouldn’t like it and she wouldn’t believe it.

“You are not safe with your family any more. It was my doing. I revealed your existence and now the master of my bloodline has gone to see yours. I took you because...” He struggled to against the tempest of feelings inside him and tried to form the words he wanted to say. He could see that she was waiting. She wanted to know the reason why he had taken her and he wanted to tell her, but everything inside of him revolted against saying the words. He swallowed hard, tensed his jaw and then ground them out. “I wanted to protect you.”

Her eyes widened for a moment and then narrowed again.

“I don’t need protection,” she said in a cold, composed voice.

“I am afraid that you do. We need to find out more about you. I know a scribe in England. He’s older than any vampire I have met. He will give us the answers we need. He will give you the answers you want.”

She backed away a step, the frown remaining etched on her face.