Page 34 of Fated In Blood (Nocturne Vampire Clan #1)

34

EVANGELINE

A tremor of doubt went through me when Blake took up position opposite me in the ring, his face a flat, unreadable mask, knives held loosely between his fingers. Fingers that had been inside me, made me come so hard I’d…

I blinked, pulling my head out of my ass, or wherever it had just been.

“Anytime you’re ready,” Blake said, lazily spinning one of the knives on the end of his finger. “Unless you just want to give up now.”

“Not a chance.” I bent my knees until I was perfectly balanced, my feet sinking into the mud. My heart rate slowed to a crawl, my body falling into a practiced, familiar stance, flexed muscles humming with new, untapped power.

I’d done this a thousand times before. Ten thousand times.

A flash of excitement sparked then ignited as I realized this might be their test, but it was also mine. I had the training, endless hours of it, but now I possessed the strength and the speed of an immortal.

It was time for me to find out what I was capable of.

Blake’s expression tightened as he noted the change in my posture, his shoulders tensing just before he came at me. His right arm swept toward my face, his left arced toward my stomach, and I dropped low, rolled, and swung my leg across his ankles, tripping him.

He stumbled, plunging the weapons downward, but I was already gone, heart pumping, blood singing as I landed on the opposite side of the circle, barely out of breath.

“Nice move, little slayer .” There was so much disgust layered onto my nickname I cringed. “We’ll see how long you can keep up.”

Anger boiled up, but I shoved emotion down. I couldn’t let him get inside my head. “I suppose we will,” I muttered, falling back into a crouch.

This time, I went for him, timing my blow perfectly, but he disappeared so quickly, and I dragged my blades through nothing but air, Blake chuckling ten feet behind me, wickedness burning in his hazel eyes, shadow magic spinning around him.

Maybe, if I had such power, this would be a closer match.

“Too slow,” he taunted. “If this was a real fight, you’d be dead.”

He pissed me off, but he was right.

I had endless hours of training but had never faced an opponent who’d outmatched me to this extent. Maybe, with months of practice, we would have a fair contest, but right now, I might as well be stepping into the ring for the first time.

“This isn’t about winning, Silver.” I’d forgotten Riordan was still here, and the fact he was witnessing this shitshow made everything worse. “We’re only trying to get a gauge on your abilities.”

“Her abilities suck,” Blake snapped. “She’ll get us all fucking killed.”

“I can do this. One more time.” I gripped my knives, measured the distance between us, then proceeded to miss him by about a mile, slamming into a tree from the momentum of my leaping attack. Okay, a full-on frontal assault was definitely not a good strategy.

I tried throwing my knives, but even that approach wasn’t quick enough, and I ended up spending all my time pulling them out of the tree trunks or looking for them in the woods. Eventually, I was biting my lip in frustration.

We fell into a pattern, Blake changing up his method of attack, and me evading using every trick my uncles had taught me and some I made up on the fly. Blake was too strong, too light on his feet, and so blindingly fast that after an hour, I hadn’t landed a single blow and was covered in a myriad of tiny, burning cuts.

“Give up, Slayer, while you still have your pride. You’re outmatched.”

I shook my head. “Once more.”

I had one more move, one I’d perfected and polished, one that even Uncle Alistair couldn’t ever anticipate. Blake lazily spun his blades and got into position, that disdainful smirk never wavering.

This probably wouldn’t work.

But I had to try.

I bolted forward at the same time he did, throwing myself to my knees at the last possible second, just before we crashed together. I slid through the mud, my knees taking the brunt of the damage, but I didn’t care, one of my knives slicing through the leather of Blake’s boot as I passed between his legs.

He grunted, the pained sound ripping through me like a sawblade.

Before I was even aware I’d moved, I was kneeling beside him, hands wrapped around his leg to slow the blood pouring out over his boot, soaking the muddy ground. “We need…” I looked over at Riordan, his eyes wide. “That healer, Sylvester, the one with the silver light.”

I could barely catch my breath, my hands shaking, the fight completely forgotten. All I saw was the grimace of pain twisting Blake’s pale face, and the blood dripping into the mud from the too deep cut.

“Get the fuck away from me.” Blake peeled my hand off his leg and glared at his friend. “I’m done here. You want to continue with this madness, that’s on you.”

“Blake, don’t you dare dematerialize, not with those wounds,” Riordan yelled, but Blake’s face squeezed tight, the tendons in his neck standing out in stark relief, and then he was gone.

“Fuck.” Riordan came up beside me, staring down at the empty spot—the bloodstains. He offered me his hand, which I ignored. “Just for the record, I’ve never seen anyone beat Blake in a knife fight. He always kicks my ass, so consider today a successful test of your skills, Silver.”

I put my head between my knees. “I feel sick. Dizzy.”

His gaze narrowed before he nodded. “Perfectly normal, given what just happened between you two.”

What that cryptic comment meant, I didn’t know, and then it didn’t matter as Riordan headed toward the wooden box and took a seat, dragging his hand down his face. “You passed the first test, so I’m going to sweeten my offer. Think of what you want most in this world, then decide how much that is worth to you.”

I didn’t have to think.

“I want Angel back. What do you want in return?”

Riordan’s blue-flecked eyes snagged on my jacket, hanging from the tree branch. “You want your sister? Then this is my proposition, Evangeline.” That got my attention. Not Silver , not Slayer , but my actual name .

“Tyrell is one of the oldest vampires on earth, Made by Caine himself. Not quite an Elder, but a true Ancient. This means he’s stronger and harder to kill than any vampire you or your family has ever attempted to slay.”

Riordan’s eyes bore deeply into me and the hair on the back of my neck stood up as the ward he’d put around my thoughts fell away. I felt lighter without that smothering cold, but more vulnerable, too.

There was safety in his protection, and I liked knowing my thoughts were safe.

“Since Laurent Made Blake and myself, and by extension you, none of us can directly harm him.” His gaze was steady when it met mine. “Not without some intervention . Like an ancient dagger that may or may not exist.”

A dark sense of premonition rolled through me when his words clicked into place. After all the dancing around, this had never been about my skills. Tonight’s little performance was a different kind of test. To see how much Silverwood blood ran in my veins.

“I can’t.” I shook my head. “I can’t , Riordan. If you’re asking the question, then you already know I can’t do this.”

“Freedom has a price, Evangeline,” he murmured sadly. “And this is mine. We need the Harpe Dagger from your family’s vault. The Silverwoods only let a few select family members into their inner circle, training them to be slayers. You have the training, Silver, which means your blood is keyed to open the Vault.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Once Malachi arrives, we’ll only have a few days before Tyrell figures out how to break the blood oath he swore to my sire. Once he breaks the oath, Blake and I are as good as dead, and so is anyone loyal to us. When we’re all dead, there will be nobody standing between him and Thorndale’s citizens.”

“There has to be a way.” I frantically threw out every idea that came to me. “Poison, silver nitrate, wolfsbane…stab him in the fucking heart with an ash stake coated in vervain.”

“He’s an Ancient, Silver. We’ve tried to kill him a dozen ways and failed,” Riordan explained patiently. “We need that weapon, and you’re going to retrieve it for us. In return, I will get your sister away from Tyrell and give you the resources to go wherever you wish.”

“Not good enough. My family will hunt us to the ends of the earth.”

“They’re already hunting you,” Blake snapped, reappearing in the circle nastier than ever, and his accusation had me spinning to face him and his shadowy magic, which seemed even darker.

“That’s why you’re so good at hiding, at staying hidden.” He plucked my jacket off the tree limb, holding it between two pinched fingers as panic raced through me. “I went down to Virginia, little slayer, and discovered something very interesting, indeed.”

Oh no.

Please, please don’t, I prayed. I’d gone to such lengths to bury my past, the last thing I wanted was for him to lay my fucked-up history out for everyone to pick apart.

“You had no right to poke around in my life.” Fear— true fear —washed through me. “If you drew my family here, if they have any idea where I am…” My voice trailed off into a hiss of air.

“Your mother ran, didn’t she? She took you and your sister and she ran. My guess is, she only took you along because you had the skills to protect them, to stay one step ahead of your family. But you couldn’t stay ahead forever, little slayer. They caught up to you eventually, didn’t they?”

Cruelty twisted his gloating smile into something ugly. “Not the vampires, but your own family.”

I forced myself to keep breathing, to not launch myself at him, my eyes stinging as I tried not to double over from the memories, the air in my lungs too sharp.

No, my greatest enemy had never been vampires.

My father and uncles had tracked us to a little town in southern Indiana, cornered my mother in front of our tiny, run-down house, cut off her head, then burned our home down around us.

Fragments of that night slammed into me—the reek of so much blood, my mother’s horrified gaze staring at nothing, the searing heat of the flames as I dragged Angel out the back door and into the woods. The next few hours when we’d been hunted like dogs.

I’d been happy in that house.

Honestly, genuinely happy, and they’d stolen that from me, too.

“My guess is, your mother died protecting you, told you to take your sister and run.” Blake paused, searching my face. From his faint smile, he found what he was looking for. “You managed to keep her safe until Tyrell snatched her up, right out from under your nose, almost like he knew right where to look. That must have stung, little slayer. Can’t even keep a promise to your?—”

One second, I was standing there, gripping my knives so tightly my hands cramped.

The next I was flying, the trees blurring around me, cold stinging my face as the rest of the world stood still. I reappeared right in front of Blake, knives already arcing downward, points headed directly for his heart. These weren’t silver, and they weren’t dipped in wolfsbane, but they would fucking hurt, and I wanted Blake to fucking bleed .

The point of the knife sliced through his shirt, pierced his skin…then of its own accord my wrist turned, the knife skating harmlessly off his rock-hard pec, the other one doing the same.

What the fuck? I’d never been so close and missed, and goddamn it, he deserved to fucking suffer. This was like something—or someone—had intervened.

I glared suspiciously at Riordan who flashed his hands. “That wasn’t me, but you dematerialized. I’ve never seen a newly turned vampire dematerialize before; I didn’t think it was possible.”

“You mean I moved like you?” I tried stabbing Blake in the thigh, but my hand shook too badly. Something was keeping me from hurting him.

I stepped back, my entire body trembling like I’d just run a marathon. “Did I disappear and everything?” Riordan nodded and some of my fury faded.

Okay, at least something good came out of this shitshow.

But I couldn’t even look at Blake. How dare he reveal this hideous failure I’d spent years of my life trying to forget, or at least put behind me. And while I’d suspected Mom had only brought me along because I was an asset, hearing those words come out of Blake’s mouth dredged up every old insecurity I’d ever had.

I swallowed hard. Being worthy… why was that something that always eluded me? Why did it mean so goddamned much, when in the end, respect changed nothing?

“You bastard,” Riordan muttered, staring down at my face for a long, tense moment. “You deserved to get stabbed. You’re lucky she was able to stop herself. I don’t know if I would have.”

“She’s fucking poison, Rohr,” Blake said quietly, as if I wasn’t even here, one hand gripping that little gold ring so tightly his knuckles were white. “She’ll tear us apart. Tear this entire clan apart if you allow her to stay. Send her away and we’ll figure out some other way to finish this.”

Riordan’s face was hard as granite when he turned to me. “You retrieve that knife and bring the weapon back here, and I will give you enough money to go anywhere in the world. You’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”

A clearly disapproving Blake glowered, but when I opened my mouth, Riordan held up his hand. “I’m not done, Evangeline.”

He didn’t even compel me; that commanding tone made me shut up. “Once Tyrell is dead and your sister is free, I will wipe her memories, if she consents. Sometimes forgetting makes the transition easier.” He noted my look of confusion. “Once you’re bound to someone that powerful, if the mating bond is broken suddenly, especially through death, the consequences will be devastating to the surviving partner.”

“But they’re not bound. He’s controlling her like you control me.”

“Tyrell called her his mate. Even a monster like him wouldn’t use that term lightly.”

I started to hyperventilate. “You’re telling me that Angel wanting to stay with him…might not be an act? She might actually have… feelings for that desiccated bag of bones?”

“I’m saying…” Riordan glanced over at Blake, who walked to the weapons and began sorting through them. Riordan lowered his voice. “Vampire biology is a complicated thing. Sometimes mates don’t get to make that decision, sometimes it’s made for them. By fate or biology or fucking bad luck, I don’t know, it just is , and once the bond snaps into place, there’s nothing you can do to change it.”

“So let’s say my sister is mated to Tyrell. What would that mean?”

“There is a bond connecting them.” Riordan placed his hand beneath his chest, at the top of his ribcage where his heart was. “Right here. They always know where the other is at all times, can sense their emotions, their distress, their thoughts.”

“ Like us ? Are you talking about us?”

“No, what we have is different. I fed you and am feeding you, and as far as Blake…totally different sort of thing. What you and I share right now will fade over time, but I will always be able to call you back to me.”

The hair on my neck bristled. Like I was a goddamned dog .

He cleared his throat. “But when one-half of a mated pair dies, the other one will always have a hole where the bond used to be. An emptiness I’ve heard is excruciatingly painful. Some never recover and die after a few decades, some choose to follow their mate straight into the Pale so they are never separated, some manage to get through it and remarry but are never mated again.”

“Why is that?”

“Because mates are rare and precious and only come around once in a lifetime. There has never been a repeat mating that I know of, though there have been some second pairings that lasted for centuries.”

Fuck.

This was worse than any of my imagined scenarios. In all of those, once Tyrell was dead, Angel was free, except…she wouldn’t be. Not ever, from the sounds of it.

But she couldn’t stay with him. If Angel lived with Tyrell long enough, she’d become a monster, just like him. Something tickled at my consciousness, something Mom had said the night we’d run.

“ They have plans for her, Evie, and you can’t ever let them get their hands on her .”

I’d always assumed she was talking about the vampires but…the oddest thought popped into my head. A ridiculous idea, one that couldn’t possibly be true. What if she was talking about my father and my uncles?

Trapping the oldest vampire in the states with a beautiful creature like my defenseless sister…that would be something they’d do.

Tyrell snatched her up, right out from under your nose, like he knew right where to look.

Blake’s taunting accusation took on a more sinister edge when I thought about the sheer impossibility of Tyrell finding us five hundred miles away from here, tucked into some tiny, forgotten town.

Unless he’d had help.

But I kept my suspicions to myself because one…no man on earth would sell his daughter to the enemy and two…fuck Blake, and even Riordan.

They didn’t deserve to know what I was thinking, not when they were only planning to use me. We weren’t a team, we weren’t lovers. We were feeding and sometimes fucking and using each other for our own ends, and by the time we all went our separate ways—providing we survived—we would hate each other even worse than we did right now.

I tossed the knives down at Riordan’s feet, the points embedding so deeply in the grass only the hilts were visible.

“I’ll get you the dagger, but I want assurances that once Tyrell is dead, you will fix my sister so she remembers none of this. Not a single minute.”