Page 23 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Jasper

She won’t sit down. Her pacing has my head on a swivel as she goes back and forth in front of the door.

“Silver, talk to me,” I coax, knowing I need her some semblance of calm if I’m going to speak to her rational side.

Her face is growing redder by the second, and I’m anxious about how she’ll react.

She’s still our hostage until Lowell proceeds with his portion of the testing, which he hasn’t done safely or effectively yet, even once, but that’s another beast entirely.

“No!” She spins on me, her finger in the air in warning, her face upturned in a vicious look that has my toes curling. “You talk! Fucking explain what he said to me right now, Jasper, or so help me?—”

Now is not the time to find her adorable, but I do.

I want to know what she’ll do if I don’t tell her, and I hope it ends with my fangs breaking through that rich-smelling flesh of hers.

She snarls, and I’m tugged back to reality where the entire thing I’ve been hoping for with her falls through my grasp like sand.

“He killed her.”

“I got that much, thank you very much.”

“It’s not what you think. Fuck, please sit down. You’re making me dizzy.”

“You’re immortal; you’ll survive.” She does, however, cross her arms.

I sigh. “I still don’t think it’s my story to tell, but it is pertinent that you hear it to understand him better.”

“I don’t know if I want to understand him anymore, Jasper. I want to kill him.”

Telling her Lowell is the most lethal of us is likely a bad idea, so I keep that fact to myself. “Lowell is the oldest of us. I found him lost and confused in the old world, wandering around in a haze. See, he had escaped from a coven of witches that had been using him as a blood slave.”

Her gasp isn’t surprising, but I sit straighter in my chair.

Silver is compassionate, which likely drew Lowell closer to the house. It oozes from her like sap from a pine.

“Blood slave for what? Rituals?” she asks.

“Yes, and no. They were feeding him absurd amounts of blood to keep him in a feral state, where he was crazed, so they could do whatever they wanted to him as long as he was satiated. They fed from him. The scars you see all over his body—” I swallow, trying not to think of them.

When I broke them apart, he was shirtless with her, which honestly threw me off. I haven’t witnessed him shirtless in many, many years.

She wouldn’t know the significance of his state of undress, but I did.

It has hope building in me, despite my need to stay level-headed and see the realistic outcome we’re heading towards: Lowell won’t be able to feed from her, and everything we three feel for her will once again be moot.

This hasn’t happened as often, but it has happened.

With her aunt, no less.

“They fed from him to turn themselves?” Her thick swallow elongates her neck, reminding me of the sweet blood thrumming just beneath its surface.

My fangs spring downward, pressing into my lower teeth with a throbbing ache growing in them.

“They fed from him for power. A coven of vampires with a witch they’re bonded to is powerful, but a coven of witches with a vampire under their spell is even more so.

They were using him to stay young and virile and to feed their magic.

But in turn, they turned him into—” How do I say this delicately? “—a monster,” I finish.

“He was blood-crazed?” she asks, and while it’s not the term we use for it, it’s the perfect way to describe him when I found him wandering the woods with the guts of a rabbit hanging from his mouth and death in his eyes.

“Yes.”

“So, what does that have to do with my aunt?” she whispers, the quake in her voice telling me she already knows where this story is headed but isn’t ready to hear it.

“She asked Lowell, the one of us who treasured her the most, loved her the deepest, to do something for her?—”

“No,” she cuts me off, covering her mouth.

Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears for the man I can see she’s likewise growing fond of.

I nod. “She asked him to spare her from death. She was in her final days. That much was true. She wanted to live. She didn’t want to leave us or this place or you.”

“She wanted to use him. Like the witches did.”

Again, I nod. “She did. I truly don’t think she thought of it the way Lowell did. Or she thought he was over that part of his life. However, we vampires have a unique perspective on the world and time. To him, it doesn’t feel like centuries ago; it feels like yesterday.”

“He couldn’t have just said no?”

“I did,” Lowell’s voice behind her cuts through the room.

Silver turns on him, backing up a few paces.

I know Lowell notes the way she retreats.

“I begged her not to ask it of me, and still she persisted.”

“You could’ve just cut her off. Walked away and let her die.” She sobs, and I fight the urge to go to her.

I know she’s hurting, but I can also smell her fear.

“I tried to. She tricked me.”

“Tricked you how? She was elderly and sick.”

“She used her love as a weapon against me, Silver.” His voice rises as he steps into her, backing her into a wall.

This needs to happen, and I’m glad I’m present in case anything goes awry, but I won’t intervene between them and impede this process any more than necessary.

“She told me she was sorry, begged me to forgive her. And I did. For the first time, someone tried to use me for my blood, for what I am, and I forgave them. It was huge for me. Then, she opened her arms, and I went to her. She pulled me into her fragile body and wrapped around me with love, and just when I melted into her feel—” he pauses, turning his neck and showing Silver the bite mark that’s his most recent scar.

“She did that? She bit you?”

He turns on her, fangs bared. “She betrayed me!”

Silver’s cries grow louder, and I spot Corvin in the open door.

I shake my head subtly, and he moves back into the hall’s shadows as I watch Lowell with rapt attention, so he does nothing untoward.

“I’m so sorry, Lowell,” she whispers, reaching for him.

He jerks backward, reeling from the offered touch. “It’s not your fault. But it’s the reason I can never test your bond. I haven’t had a drop of human blood since I escaped that coven. I will never drink from another human, and I will never let my blood spill for someone else. Ever again.”

She nods. “I understand.”

So do we, unfortunately.

He’s not the reason we’re all cursed, but he’s the reason we’ll never have it lifted.

Some days, I feel so much animosity toward him, and those days, I avoid the manor like the plague because he doesn’t need my bullshit piled onto his own.

I sigh, letting my eyes cast away from them now that the truth lies bare in the room like a weighted smog.

“We can walk you home,” I offer to Silver, and it takes a moment for her to register my words.

“What? But I’m… Lowell, he has to—” She gives Lowell a look as he flicks his eyes away from her and backs up, his demeanor going from rigid to downright homicidal.

“This was a mistake. Bringing you here was wrong; we apologize for doing so. Thinking he was ready so soon after what happened with Soliel was wrong of us,” I tell her, and Lowell growls as he storms out of the room. “And then, with everything we found out about your lineage?—”

“What about my lineage?” She turns on me, stepping closer.

Her eyes are clear of emotion, bright, and curious as Corvin steps out of the shadows again.

There’s sadness etched on his face, and I know it will be another century to get him under control now that he’s let someone in.

Let Silver in.

“Your great aunt wasn’t your blood relative,” Corvin states, and she turns around to face him.

Standing sideways, she looks between the two of us. “And when were you going to tell me? After you were done fucking my mouth and every other hole you could fit your cock into?”

She stabs the question in Corvin’s direction, and I shift in my seat at the news that anything of the sort happened between them. I’ve never known the male to go that far with a potential key.

Not since Valentina.

Not since the dawn of this fucking curse.

Corvin winces as her words land their jab. “We didn’t think it was important information because you had to get past Lowell, and no one does.”

Sadness wavers on Silver’s face again.

“And what else did my blood reveal?” she asks me, but I nod toward Corvin, letting her know just who’s in charge of all things laboratory.

He swallows, giving me a look I can’t quite read, almost like he has information he’s yet to share with even me.

“Out with it!” I growl, sitting forward and leaning my elbows on my desk as I stare him down in anticipation.

“Your bloodline traces back to a vampire lineage thought lost to history—one that was very powerful.”

My interest piques, and I stare him down to egg him on.

“And? I’m not a vampire, so that can’t be right.”

“Well, vampirism didn’t use to be what it is now. It wasn’t always vampires turning humans to expand their bloodline. It was inherited, passed down through generations through the genes.”

“What family?” I ask, searching his face as it pales a fraction of a second before he answers.

“Tenebris.”

I sit back, feeling my face drain of the little blood coursing through it. “No fucking way.”

“I ran the test four times.”

“Tenebris? Who were they?” she asks, flicking her gaze between us as we chew on the news.

“The most powerful vampire line there ever was. The original line.”

“Uhh—” She laughs, shaking her head and crossing her arms. “You’ve both lost the fucking plot. That’s not possible. Like I said, not a vampire.” She lifts her lip and shows us both her teeth.

“The gene in vampires who are born works differently, unfortunately,” Corvin tells her, shoving his hands in his pockets to hide their quake.

If he’s right, if she’s a Tenebris, she’s not only the only one living, but she’s more powerful than all four of us combined.

He’s right to be afraid of her.

“How does it work?” she asks, her voice shaking.

“Someone has to feed you,” I reply for him when Corvin seems unable to do so. “Someone has to awaken the gene.”

“Let me ask you something,” I add, standing and buttoning my suit jacket as she pins me with her baby blues teeming with fear. “What do you remember from your childhood?”

“I—” she swallows thickly. “I’ve never actually told anyone this before.”

I nod. “Go on.”

“I don’t remember my childhood.”

“None of it?” Corvin asks, stepping closer to her now, his fear tossed to the wayside as his curiosity piques.

“Not one blessed moment,” she replies, and I hear both his heart and mine collectively skip an off-center beat as the air in the room charges.

“Who am I?” she asks, tears rolling down her beautiful cheeks.

“We don’t know.”

It’s all the answer I can give her as we mull over the possibility that she’s a walking relic who needs to be locked away.

For her safety and ours.