Page 35 of Fated In Blood (Nocturne Vampire Clan #1)

35

EVANGELINE

A fter Riordan and I endured yet another ‘clinical’ feeding that nearly went off the rails, I barely slept that night, tormented by nightmares of a blond woman on her knees in the middle of a dead-end street, begging for her life. Of my father pulling his sword and slicing her head off.

Not cleanly, either.

Silas Silverwood needed three blows to take Aurora’s head, and I’d seen every single one. I’d forced myself to watch while cradling a sobbing, hysterical Angel, and I would never forget the dull thwack of his blade severing sinew and bone, or the way her screams cut off so abruptly.

My fault, my fault, my fault.

Over the years the pragmatic part of me reasoned this wasn’t my fault, but my traitorous soul begged to differ. And my soul usually won out.

Angel had been hiding in the house when Silas torched it.

I always wondered if he realized his youngest daughter was inside, or if he even cared. We’d been saved by a propane tank exploding, nearly killing one of my uncles. In the ensuing chaos, I’d dragged Angel out the back door and into the woods. After we’d escaped, I’d taken charge of keeping us both safe.

Hidden from our family.

Yet I’d failed miserably at both tasks.

Maybe , my sleepy, traitorous mind wondered, if I’d been able to keep my…

No . There was a good reason mom protected me from her own past. A reason we never, ever trusted witches. A reason we Silverwood women kept our secrets, no matter the cost.

I woke with a dried mouth, thundering heart, and sweaty limbs tangled in the moldy blanket. Bolting out of bed, I heaved up my guts in the toilet, drank a few mouthfuls of water from the tap in the bathroom, then tried to fall back to sleep.

My next dream was even worse.

I stared down a long hallway I hadn’t thought of in years, my breath fogging the air even though it wasn’t that cold. The door at the end led to the Silverwood Vault, which took up the entire subterranean level of White Chapel, the home our family had occupied since the seventeenth century.

The Vault was an engineering marvel, an impenetrable box with eight-inch welded, riveted iron walls surrounded by twenty feet of granite in every direction. The only way in or out was that single—locked—door leading to the cavernous space my uncles proudly called their trophy room.

As if their vendetta against vampires was some sort of sanctioned holy war.

Surrounded by shelves packed with jewels and gold and ancient artifacts was a box on a simple wooden stand. Made of ebony wood so dark you couldn’t see the grain, polished to an unnaturally mirrored shine, the box contained the Silverwood family’s greatest treasure.

In my dream, I reached in and wrapped my hand around the hilt of the dagger, cool to the touch, even wrapped in a black velvet bag.

Scythe of Cronus, Sickle of Zeus—this weapon had been called many names over the millennia.

We called this blade the Harpe Dagger—named for the blade Perseus used to kill Medusa—a parable that resonated strongly with my great-great-grandfather and my father’s lofty view of himself.

Always the hero, my father.

Silas Silverwood believed he was called by a higher power to become a slayer, and that unshakable belief gave him a fanatical dedication to the family business.

His three brothers, my uncles, felt just as strongly.

The first sixteen years of my life had been filled with plans for the future—a full-scale extermination against our ancient enemies. How good would conquer evil, how light would defeat darkness.

Every minute of every day was spent training me, molding me for that singular goal.

And this dagger was the weapon that would cut our enemy down like stalks of wheat.

The gold blade was tainted by the blood of a hundred thousand victims over a thousand years, both the guilty and the innocent, and could—according to family legend—only be wielded by those of Silverwood blood.

I’d only seen the fabled dagger once before, hoisted over my father’s head, from the farthest corner of the Vault, through a sea of bodies, and only for a second.

But I’d know that weapon anywhere.

I woke up sweaty, starving, and in a foul mood.

After a lukewarm bath, the only thing that had changed? I was clean.

Because I’d lost my bag of clothing during the fucking disaster in Valentine’s basement, I owned exactly one outfit, and even for me, this one smelled ripe. But my life wasn’t a fucking fashion show.

No, I’d spent most of this morning staring up at the cracked ceiling, planning my incursion onto the family grounds, figuring out how to access the Vault and avoid an awkward family reunion that would most likely end up with me dead.

Plus, for the first time since I’d been turned, I wanted actual food, which I supposed was some sort of progress.

Unfortunately, after a particularly hot dream, I wanted Riordan’s blood, too.

And his fingers and his mouth and other parts of him, but this time, I was sticking to just blood. Sex muddied everything up—in my head, at least—and despite His Majesty’s magic fingers, the fewer ties I had to these two males when I left this godforsaken town, the better.

But over and over, my thoughts kept returning to one particular detail of yesterday’s conversation.

Riordan’s fingers lightly resting over his heart as he explained the concept of vampire mates.

The exact spot Blake had rubbed, over and over, after I’d told him my name. The same fucking place my own heart ached when I’d tried to stab him. When he’d been hurt. Every single time I thought about leaving.

The bedroom door squealed when I stepped into the hall trying to get my bearings. I’d only seen a small portion of this place, and there was no rhyme nor reason to how the rambling hallways were laid out or the bewildering number of doors.

My bedroom was in the same wing as the room with the single chair, albeit one floor up. The foyer was at the bottom of a fancy set of carved stairs—vaguely reminding me of the dragon staircase I’d destroyed at Tyrell’s castle—and from there, all I had to do was follow the smell of coffee.

I’d need a change of clothes. Knives. A holster. Probably a gun or two wouldn’t hurt.

Transportation to Virginia, and a few days of reconnaissance to scope out the old homestead and get a head count, since there was hardly ever a time when everyone was there at the same time.

My father had three brothers, plus a generous assortment of nephews, all of them highly trained, some more deadly than others. To my knowledge, I was the only female Silverwood to ever be accepted into their hallowed vampire-slaying ranks.

Also, according to my father on the night he killed my mom, his greatest mistake.

But failure or not, I had the training, and I possessed the proper bloodline to gain access to the Vault—though I wondered if that was technically accurate anymore, given I was now a vampire—but if that dagger was the price of getting my sister back, then I’d gladly pay it.

Anything to get Angel back.

Anything to keep my word to Mom and prove—if only to myself—I was worth something.

I came to an intersection of two corridors and the smell of fresh coffee grew irresistible. I hung a right, hoping my nose wasn’t playing tricks on me. Since I’d been turned, this was the first thing I’d wanted to drink as much as blood.

The only good thing about this whole situation? The Vault was never guarded. Since the ironclad room was buried deep in the foundation of what had once been a church, with the house built overtop, my family took a rather cavalier view of their treasure trove.

No one, they reasoned, would be fool enough to steal from them, no one would be suicidal enough to risk a fight with the great and mighty Silverwoods, and nobody could make the four flights down and escape without detection.

No, their arrogance made them overconfident and that was my only advantage.

Since my family hunted in carefully chosen groups and were always off somewhere killing vampires, there were usually only five or six Silverwoods in the compound at any given time, so I’d have to memorize their security patrols and get a bead on who was present to maximize success.

The next corner I turned, the smell of coffee hit me square in the face, strong and earthy and fully caffeinated, along with two male voices speaking in hushed tones.

No, not speaking. Arguing .

The tension in those strained voices forced my feet to stop before I reached the open doorway, curiosity prickling, along with a healthy dose of dread.

“Goddamn it, Rohr, it’s bad enough you’re feeding her, did you have to fuck her, too?”

“It’s been a long time, Blake, even by my standards. We need her strong so she can fight alongside us, and the sex…well, that’s just a bonus.”

Wait… what ?

“She’s a goddamn Silverwood .” Blake’s tone was sharp as a dagger. “Murderers, defilers of the innocent. They’ve destroyed families , Rohr. Ripped entire clans apart and ended bloodlines.” My breath caught at the gut-wrenching misery in his voice. “You might have forgotten what they did to Cassmira, but I never will.”

“I have not forgotten.” Something—a coffee cup, most likely—slammed down onto a table. Riordan sounded…exhausted. “I’ll never forget what they did to Cass, not as long as I live. But Evangeline wasn’t involved, and that girl is not your enemy. She’s our means of getting rid of Laurent. Silas and Alistair slaughtered your family, not Evangeline.”

I was processing everything too slowly, still hung up on the fact Riordan had used me because he’d hit a dry spell, the fucker. Not that I expected a great romance, but there had been a moment when I thought we’d connected.

And sure, I’d confessed Silas was my father, but they knew my uncle’s name. Blake had gone to Virginia .

What else did they know?

“According to her . Stop making excuses for a slayer you barely know. Who’s to say this isn’t another Silverwood trap, meant to trick us into trusting her while her uncles and father sweep in and exterminate the lot of us?”

“She’s not?—”

“We agreed,” Blake hissed as if Riordan hadn’t said anything. “We agreed to use her then throw her away once Tyrell was dead. That was our deal, Riordan, and don’t you dare renege because your cock’s hard and she’s a sweet piece of ass.”

“I want that weapon.” Riordan’s voice was steely. “I want to know that blade is in our possession and not Silas’s. I want to know he can’t, at least, use that knife against us ever again.”

“Then use her to get the weapon and kill Tyrell and get rid of her. I don’t care if you send her across the globe or put her in the ground. I swear to God, I can’t stand looking at her for another moment. She looks like him. She has his fucking eyes. I should have known from the very second I first saw her who she was. I should have known that night and let her bleed out. You warned me, and I didn’t listen.”

I sagged against the nearest wall, sliding down and down and down until my ass hit the floor.

He was right.

I had my father’s uniquely colored eyes. His golden-brown hair. And the only way Blake could possibly know that was if he’d seen Silas Silverwood in the flesh.

My father killed Blake’s family.

Not my uncles or one of my cousins, but my own father . He’d delivered Blake’s own sister to her death. Slaughtered Blake’s parents, and fuck knows he would have been messy about it. I rubbed my aching chest, willing the bile to go down, for me not to vomit right here.

Every time Blake looked at me…that’s what he saw. Not only did my father murder them, he took Blake’s sister, ravaged her, and gave her to…Tyrell.

I frowned, trying to make that compute.

Why not kill her, according to the old family motto? Why involve an Ancient, when killing such a powerful vampire would be a feather in my father’s cap? There was a tall glass cylinder in the Vault, filled with fangs from their victims. Thousands of them, most with the bloodied root still attached.

But on the wall behind that were the heads of their notable kills, mounted like deer heads.

There was no possible way, if my father knew Tyrell existed, he’d ever pass up the chance to add such a coveted prize to the family’s trophy wall.

“Letting her die would have haunted you forever. You did the right thing, now we’ll deal with the fallout.” Riordan sounded so reasonable, but his voice was hollow. I didn’t care.

They were using me. I could try and try, but I’d never prove myself to them. Riordan’s promise to take away Angel’s memories was probably bullshit, too. He’d lied to me about everything else, why would he help my sister?

“And now it’s you she’s fucking bonded to, asshole. For-fucking-ever.” Glass shattered on the floor, after Blake’s angered growl, slivers flying through the door into the hallway. “I should have been the one to turn her, but now you’re shackled to a scheming slayer for the rest of your immortal life.”

“I’m trying to find a way out of this shitty situation, save our clan, and keep us both alive, Blake. I swear to fucking God, once Tyrell is dead, I hope you’ll see that’s all I’m trying to accomplish.”

“And you think you’re going to accomplish that by fucking her?” Something bigger—a chair, maybe—hit the floor.

“You fucked her first.” All the calm had drained from Riordan’s voice, replaced by vibrating rage. “You were the one who brought her back here, panting after her like she was your whole fucking world, so don’t you dare talk to me about?—”

“Before I knew who she was ,” Blake roared. “ You don’t have that excuse .” Pottery and glass crashed, wood splintered, then fists hit flesh with that dull, meaty sound.

I pushed to my feet, steadying myself on the wall behind me as the sounds of brutal fighting echoed from the kitchen. Not the restrained, methodic sparring from yesterday, but something vicious and unhinged. Filled with fury and hate and rage.

Then I ran. Faster than I’d ever run. I burst through the front doors and flew across the lawn, between the gates and down the gravel road toward town.

This changed nothing. Nothing .

I was used to operating alone, making my own decisions, fighting my own battles. This would be no different.

Except now I was stronger. Faster.

The stakes were higher than they’d ever been. My sister’s life hung in the balance.

The Harpe Dagger killed everything it touched. That blade sucked souls from flesh, and there was no need for beheading or burning, because the knife delivered true death to a vampire, no matter their age or rank or heritage.

I headed straight to Valentine’s, a brand-new plan taking shape, one that didn’t involve two lying, egomaniacal vampires.

But did include one lying, backstabbing, hairy ex-boss.