Page 34 of Dance of the Phoenix (Cloak of the Vampire #3)
Aileen
The cafeteria transformed.
Gone were the buffet and the tables and chairs, and in their stead were a few high-top party tables filled with blood-mixed champagne glasses.
Music streamed through a couple of monitors, overseen by one of the League members, who seemed to have been a DJ in his human past. The floor was filled with vampires talking and dancing under decorated letters that dangled from the ceiling, creating the words Good luck in the Hecatomb!
“They really went above and beyond, didn’t they?” Zoey said from where she, Isora, and I stood near one of the champagne tables.
“It is the last night before you head to your possible doom, after all,” Isora said with a shrug, “and many high-profile members are going, like Oberon, Neisha, and Logan.”
Isora was right; many members seemed to cluster around the aforementioned three. I knew Logan was popular in the League, but I hadn’t realized just how much until now.
Zoey sipped from her glass before she said, “Perhaps I should go mingle as well.”
I couldn’t help but smile at her words. “Already preparing the ground for when you return victorious?”
She snickered. “Well, I do plan to become a full-fledged member of the Troop once we win this thing, and if possible, I would like to become a Commander.”
To be fair, Zoey’s ambitions weren’t that far-fetched. I heard the talks among the Hecatomb participants during our last few training days. She had the potential to develop a Gift as she grew older in her vampire years. She was just that strong, for a Common.
My eyes went back to Logan, who was smiling and laughing with a few members as he drank a glass of beer.
He seemed so young just then, and it occurred to me that he’d once told us in the newcomer course that he’d been given the Imprint three years ago—or a bit over it now, since it had been about seven months since then.
Either way, it meant he’d been eighteen at the time, which meant not long after I had left him, Ragnor had given him the Imprint.
I couldn’t help but wonder how he even got the Imprint in the first place. Was he on the Waiting List, like all other vampires?
“Hey,” Isora said, nudging me with her elbow. I turned to look at her, and her eyes flickered to a point behind my shoulder emphatically. “Someone is coming over.”
I turned around to see Jada heading my way.
It’d been a while since I last saw her, and it seemed as if it had been years.
Her black skin, which normally shone with health, was now completely ashen.
Her brilliant gray eyes had sunk into her face, her lips were cracked and dry, and she seemed to have lost too many pounds for a mere week, causing her to look so small under her now oversize clothes.
“Aileen,” she said when she approached me after dragging her feet as if she had no energy left in her limbs. “Can we talk?”
Seeing her in this state made my heart race in something akin to panic. “Of course.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Isora said, taking her glass, and left after a look of concern toward Jada. She didn’t even know Jada, but even a stranger could tell the situation was dire.
Jada’s sunken eyes peered at me, lacking their usual mischievous glow—or any other emotion, really. “I would like to ask you something,” she said in a drawn, lifeless voice.
“Yes,” I said, glancing around the room. Where was CJ? Why was he letting his soulmate, or “Alara Morreh” as Jada had told me she was called, off his radar when she looked like the walking dead?
“If CJ dies,” she said, making my eyes snap back to hers in shock. She did not seem remotely startled by her own words as she continued. “Please kill me.”
My mouth fell open. “I ... what?” Had I just heard her right?
She shrugged, as if we were talking about the weather. “If a Malachi dies, their Alara Morreh will continue to live in suffering. I want to avoid that. So please kill me if it comes to that.”
I was at a loss for words. I did not want to kill Jada, no matter her circumstances. She had no idea what she was asking of me—or of anyone, really.
But even though I wanted to refuse, to object, to tell her I wouldn’t do it, the look in her eyes made me come to a searing, unbearable pause. Because I recognized that look. I’d seen that look too many times in my past.
She looked like the girls my father tortured.
Utterly hopeless.
And so the only thing I could say was, “All right.” Because back then, I couldn’t give those girls the peaceful death they deserved. And while Jada’s circumstances were vastly different, her eyes told me she was feeling just as tortured, albeit a different type of torture.
Jada nodded and then walked away; conversation done.
I wished I knew how to reach out to her and make it all okay. I wished I could tell her that CJ wouldn’t die, that he would prevail, that this promise was redundant.
But I knew better than most that words were empty, and actions spoke far louder. And I couldn’t promise CJ, or anyone else but Ragnor, would make it out alive.
Ragnor was packing when I entered the suite later that evening. I had already packed earlier, so I simply sat in the living room and watched as he neatly folded his clothes and put them in the open backpack.
“How was the party?” he asked me with a small smile. Ragnor had made a brief appearance at the beginning of the party just to say a few words but had disappeared to his office right after to tie up a few last things before he left his secretaries in charge until his return.
“It was all right,” I said, thinking about Jada. The truth was, it wasn’t. Nothing about it was all right.
I felt as though I’d neglected my friend, the first person in the Rayne League who’d welcomed me with open arms. I’d been so busy training and sorting shit out with Ragnor, not to mention Logan, that all thoughts about Jada’s and CJ’s circumstances had been put in the back of my mind.
But now that Jada already looked as if CJ had died, and especially now that she had made her request, I was suddenly overwhelmed by everything I’d failed to pay attention to—and not just Jada either.
I hadn’t visited Tansy once since training started. I knew from Isora, who was by her side most days, that she was still in a coma, so there wasn’t anything new in that regard, but it didn’t mean I hadn’t neglected caring for someone when I was partially responsible for her state.
There was also Isora herself, who was going to be at the Hecatomb and potentially come face-to-face with Renaldi, the Lord who’d tormented her before she was bought by Atalon. I’d been so wrapped up in my own shit that I hadn’t even asked her how she was dealing with this whole situation.
I was a shit friend.
And, looking at Ragnor, I also knew I was a shit lover.
In conclusion, I was a shit person, and I felt like absolute shit about it.
Ragnor finished packing and zipped up the bag before he came over to sit next to me on the sofa, wrapping an arm around me. “You okay?” he asked, squeezing me to him.
I was tempted to succumb to his warmth, but I couldn’t. Not when I was feeling like I’d let down everyone around me.
But I was curious about one thing. Something I had wanted to ask Ragnor but never got the chance to, thanks to my self-absorption. “Do you know about the Malachi?”
Ragnor’s response was not what I’d expected.
He retracted his arm and leaned back, looking at me with eyes gone blank, his shoulders tense, his jaw locked. “The Malachi,” he repeated, as though the word were foreign.
I frowned, not understanding his stiff reaction. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Jada told me about them. That they are a celestial species like angels. I figured you probably knew.” It would be very strange, after all, if he didn’t, considering one of his League members used to be one.
Ragnor’s eyes glowed, making me tense, but I couldn’t read him. I had no idea what emotion was riding him hard enough to make his eyes glow. His face was completely indecipherable. “I see,” he said, and offered nothing more.
I had the sudden nagging feeling that Ragnor was telling me without telling me to back off.
That this subject was taboo, for whatever reason.
It wasn’t just his expressionless face, but the tension drawn in his shoulders.
The sudden distance he put between us, as though his latest emotional distance now showed in the physical sense.
Since I had trouble with doing what I was told, especially when it came to Ragnor Rayne, my first instinct was to push. But looking at his glowing eyes, I had the sudden feeling that pushing him right now would be a mistake.
Whatever his deal with the Malachi was, it seemed I had stepped on a landmine.
So I plastered on a fake smile and said, “Never mind. Forget it,” before rising to my feet and walking to the bathroom to take a long, calming bath.
Fighting with Ragnor the night before we headed to the Hecatomb would not be wise.
Not for him, and certainly not for me.