Page 11 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

11

N yte

I didn’t want to be here, so far from my Starlight, but I needed to see for myself what my little brother had been doing in my absence. Following the red-headed rogue Nadia brought us deep into the mountains. The cold was sharper this high up, but it was a hidden spot, perfect to conduct the sinister project of transitioning humans to vampires.

“You know they say the blood vampires first came into creation from humans?” Nadia said. She sat on a rock she’d dusted the snow from, swinging her legs.

“Then how come we have shadows?” Elliot pondered.

She answered, “Because the original blood vampires were a consequence of mortals having their shadows stolen by a cursed god that terrorized the realm. Then they procreated, of course.”

Kerrah huffed, tucking a flying whisp of brown hair away. “That’s a ridiculous claim.”

Zeik was peeling an apple with his small knife. He joined in the discussion with a full mouth. “Don’t they also say some of the Maiden’s guardians were cursed gods?”

Their eyes started to target me as if I would have more knowledge about Astraea and her guardians. In truth, I didn’t get the chance to learn as much as I wanted to with her in our past life.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “This is not the same. You were among the lucky ones who faced this dark magick to transition humans and kept your sane minds.”

“Lucky,” Sorleen echoed my word with cold detachment.

Elliot lingered by her as he usually did, casting her a saddened look.

“There is luck even in misfortunes but that doesn’t cancel out a fraction of your burden,” I said.

Sorleen didn’t look at me; I was growing used to her vacancy and Elliot seemed to be the only one who stayed close by her regardless of the silence.

When I first found out about my father’s plan to bring back the making of vampires… it took a lot to horrify me and that was exactly the thing to do it. He’d made the discovery in a book of long outlawed and forbidden magick. It was barbaric and unpredictable to create such a species that caused periods of such carnage in our history that the celestials had no choice but to have all of them hunted and slaughtered to stop the procreation. Even though some transitioned could be as civil as the Born. It was too much of a risk to mankind.

I would never forget my father’s first successful leap to repeat history. Elliot’s terror was something that threaded through his charisma even to this day when I looked at him. He’d survived, and mercifully after his first feed, he didn’t become something uncontrollable with thirst that I would have had to have put down. It wasn’t often that I cared, but something about him made me curious.

“How many?” I asked Nadia.

“Twenty thousand, give or take.”

Shit. It was far more than I’d expected. Exceeding the recorded number of creations our history had ever reached. If those were the survivors… the number of humans dead as a result would be even higher over the past century.

“How many roam through the kingdoms?”

“At least half. The others are either too savage, kept in cages within these mountains and fed enough to keep them alive, or still undergoing training before they can be let go to join civility.”

Training was a cruel word for taking someone’s humanity and forcing them to learn to live with the monster they’d become. Or they would die.

The transitioned vampires had one ability to help them to remain untraceable. They could compel the mind of someone whose blood they’d drank, and their saliva healed any puncture wounds in flesh. The humans would never know the sinister change in some of those they’d taken in as neighbors and friends. The transitioned vampires were the ultimate predators of the species they once were, and that was the cruelest twist of fate.

“Some of them are insufferable little beasties,” Kerrah muttered.

“Like snapping nymphs,” Zeik added, bashing his teeth to depict it.

We watched the cave entrance far below us as a new wagon pulled up and I could hear the frightened cries of the humans within. When I saw who was being escorted out—

“Children?” I seethed, standing from my crouch.

“The king’s order,” Nadia said, low and resentful. “When I was there, they would often disappear, and I’d never see them again. I always assumed they’d died in the attempt to change them.”

These humans couldn’t be much past their first decade.

“How long ago did he start bringing them in so young?” Elliot asked her.

“Around eighty years ago.”

“I’m going in,” I said. Rage was already coursing through me and perhaps I would get to release some of it.

“The wings aren’t fair,” Zeik grumbled.

“You won’t be too far behind,” I said, stepping off the high ledge.

Dropping down in front of the carriage, my fist tightened at the soulless whose hand connected with a crying boy’s face.

The soulless straightened immediately at the sight of me, his contorted face of ugly anger blanked to terror.

“That wasn’t very nice,” I said calmly.

My words caused him to shudder more and take a step back, as if he could deny doing what I saw.

“M-My lord,” he stuttered, giving a short bow of his head. “Their cries—they won’t stop.”

My eyes fell on the boy, then across the ghostly faces of those in the carriage cage.

“Look away and cover your ears,” I said to them.

They didn’t hesitate.

Zeik and Kerrah caught up first, bickering over who would take the reins of the carriage. Elliot stayed back with Sorleen, who kept stoic. Nadia stood closest to me. It looked like I wasn’t doing a good enough job of repelling her from me. I’d have to work on that.

“Terror does that to a person,” I said to the shuddering soulless. The vampire cried out when his knees slammed to the ground without a trace of physical force. “What’s worse than the cries of frightened children are the wails of cowardly men.”

The shadows that climbed his body began to seep into his ears, his mouth, his nose, then his eyes. They robbed all his senses to induce the most silent and lonely kind of physical suffering. It had taken some time to learn everything the shadows were—what they could do. The dark could be crafted and learned and they answered me like kin.

The soulless wasn’t worth any more effort than the snapped neck I commanded through his mind without touching him. The darkness spilled like smoke from his body when it fell.

“Get them out of here,” I said, not looking at any of the Guard in particular.

Many years with them led me to anticipate that Zeik and Kerrah would take the wagon, while Elliot and Sorleen followed behind me along with the rogue.

The scent of damp stone was lined with a faint copper tang of blood. De spite the cold, there was a certain humidity that began to choke the air the deeper into the cave we ventured.

My focus was wrapped around myself, however. Calling to the beast that lived inside me already clawing the confines I kept it in. Nightsdeath had become a reputation, but it was a harrowing essence inside of me. The kind of pure darkness that repelled any kind of light. It was something I could be in control of, though it had taken decades of torture and discipline not to let the power become me.

“We weren’t expecting you,” a woman, soulless, spoke when we entered a wider expanse of the cave.

“If you were, you’d already be dead,” I answered.

“Of course, my lord.” She dipped her head, avoiding my sight as if that would stop me seizing her mind.

At first, the eyes were the door—a necessary to breach the mind. That was an obstacle I’d torn down centuries ago.

“Your arrival doesn’t surprise me, brother.” I inwardly groaned at the sound of Drystan’s tone of amusement. He really was hell-bent on testing the limits of my mercy toward him. “Though I am disappointed at how long it took you.”

Easing out from the cloak of shadow, he approached with a swagger that was far too comfortable in this place of evil. So much had changed in this last century, and I still had catching up to do before this new version of him would settle in my mind without conflict. Before he had always been innocent, curious. His thoughts were filled with wanderlust and untouched by darkness. Now, I could hardly stand to look at the mirror image of me he was becoming .

This is who he was now. Not the naive young prince that was eager for my company. Not the enthusiastic male that once lived in his own world spared from the malevolent corners of reality.

“So in my stead, father placed you as the overseer of this?” I commented dryly.

“You could say that.”

Drystan spared a look at my company, and the faint twitch of his brow landing his attention back on me tightened my fists. He didn’t need to say it, nor did I need his thoughts for it: he questioned Astraea’s absence.

The tension between us grew, grating even more against my skin with the small audience we had.

“A word alone, brother?” I ground out.

To my relief, he obliged, leading us off down an open passage. Only a single look at Elliot was needed, and he knew to stay and stand guard with Sorleen. Nadia took a step to follow me.

“You stay with them,” I ordered.

“You wouldn’t be here without me,” she protested.

“I won’t risk you doing something reckless facing the one person you want dead the most.”

“I’m not some reckless, unhinged thing or I would have attempted it long ago.”

I couldn’t believe I was entertaining this conversation as long as I was.

“You can bring your new pet, it makes no difference to me,” Drystan said.

Her green eyes blazed at him then and that’s all the confirmation I needed that she was too much of a temper risk.

“Stay. Here.”

Elliot came up to her, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged out of it, storming back toward the entrance.

“Stars help us,” Elliot muttered.

I followed Drystan down a narrow dark hall until we came to an office, elaborate and finely decorated. So many items and tones made it easy to tell this room belonged to Drystan and had for some time. Several maps hung on walls, some with pins and strings that likely calculated a hundred ventures he would never see. There were books and compasses and telescopes. He always had a fascination with the wonders of the world.

“It was a convincing show you put on for Tarran on the rooftop after the Libertatem, I will say. Even if it was all wasted breath to grapple the reins of control you’ve lost with the vampires. But I haven’t,” Drystan said, wandering around the walnut desk littered with papers.

“You’ve grown in confidence; I can admire that. Even if it’s of pure delusion.”

“You’ve always underestimated me. It means nothing to me now. In fact, it only makes this all the more gratifying in the end.”

“This only kills you in the end,” I snarled.

“Careful. It almost sounds like you still care for me.”

I wished I didn’t, but I wouldn’t abandon my responsibility for him as my brother, no matter what he did to me. I was condemned as his enemy in his eyes, but I would be damned if that’s what I truly became.

“Do you know where our cowardly father is hiding?” I asked.

“Actually, no. I figured you would by now and I planned to ask you that. Are you losing your touch?”

“A hundred years behind a veil seems to have slowed me a little.”

Drystan waved a nonchalant hand. “It’s only been a few weeks. I won’t hold it over you.”

I studied him hovering around his desk, shifting some papers around absentmindedly. It was jarring to watch, when there were moments I wanted to deny anything had changed at all in him. Between us.

“Your new recruit is… feisty,” he settled on his word choice.

“She wants you dead.”

Drystan’s caramel eyes flicked up in mild surprise.

“Have I personally offended her?”

“Taking her life against her will?”

His sight dropped and he straightened. I wanted to know what he was thinking. He’d become so masterful at hiding his emotions, but the silence was filled with his unspoken thoughts.

“Is this how it feels then? Shouldering all the blame for something far larger?”

“You’ve been providing your blood for some of the transitions. Did you know it created a blood bond?”

“Of course.”

“Then you are to blame.”

His eyes turned sharp and resentful on me.

“Forget it. As if you could ever understand anything but your own self,” he said bitterly.

“Nadia wants you dead to break the bond. Do you know how many enemies you’ll make if all the others you’ve transitioned find out?” I snapped.

He turned, bracing his hands on the table, and I didn’t recognize the threatening demeanor that fell over him.

“Then best kill the rogue before she starts talking. Better yet, hand her over to me.”

“You’re no killer, Drystan.”

Yet as I said the words they seemed laughable in the cold irises he pinned me with.

“If she figured it out, others will too. Killing her doesn’t eliminate the many deadly threats you’ve made against yourself.”

“They’re only deadly to someone who can be killed.”

My jaw clenched tight in anger infused irritation. “Death is not a god that can be summoned and grant you fucking wishes. They don’t give dark power to those with ambition, or father would be the one with the beast inside him. Is he making you do this?”

Drystan straightened, and I knew I’d struck a nerve.

“I wanted the key to never touch his hands as much as you did,” he said.

“Why?”

“Those who crave power as savagely as he does are the ones who should never come close to it—you taught me that.”

It disturbed something in me that he would recall anything I said to him. There were few regrets I harbored in a long existence crafted of many vicious deeds, but what I’d done to him in taking his mother would always be one of them.

“I know you don’t trust me. But neither of us want our father gaining more than he already has. We could find him together.”

Drystan huffed, a bitter sound.

“You’re right, I don’t trust you. It’s best we keep our endeavors separate. How about a race though? First to find our father gets the reward of killing him.”

“What is your endeavor?”

“You were always masterful at keeping me out of yours; why would I tell you mine?”

“That’s not true and you know it. I told you everything I could.”

“You and Astraea had secrets.”

I wouldn’t deny that. We’d included Drystan as much as we could. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him back then, there was just so much at stake.

It was getting exhausting to reason with him.

“Did you really come here just to interrogate me and think I would spill everything to you after all this time?”

“They’re children,” I snarled.

That wiped his expression to indifference.

“You know age is no barrier to cruelty to our father.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Because I was tired of being a pawn in everyone’s game.”

“You’re better than this.”

Better than me. I spent my life trying to stop him from falling into the same villainy I had and now looking at Drystan was like seeing a horrifying reflection I wanted to shatter.

“We’re all born better,” Drystan said, his voice stripped of anything familiar. “At some point the pain behind us makes us turn around, and the person we find holding the knife in our back makes us realize being better is what made it a shock. Becoming worse is how we never give another that power again.”

I couldn’t believe how much he’d changed. How guarded he’d become. Somehow I always thought him to be the most resilient person I knew, but the spirit he once harbored had been broken, and I would always shoulder the guilt of it.

“I want to meet with Astraea,” he requested. “Alone.”

He might as well have tried to strike me considering the rush of rage and defense that tightened my skin.

“No,” I growled low.

“Then good luck finding father on your own.”

The anger simmering under my skin strained the tethers of my control on the magick that could incinerate everything in this room with a thought.

“What do you want with her?”

“What part of alone didn’t convey that it’s none of your business?”

My teeth ground. There was no one else who could rile me to the point I had to hold back my impulses like Drystan could. In some ways, it had trained me to maintain control in a way that I suppose I should be somewhat grateful for.

“She’s not coming alone. I’ll be outside wherever it is.”

“Our old gambling establishment,” he said. “One week’s time.”

“I won’t force her.”

“You won’t have to.”

I didn’t think so either, but it was soothing to think of her refusal for a second.

Suddenly, my world silenced to a distant lance of pain within me and I trained on it, forgetting the presence of Drystan. It was an echo I knew from far and long ago. Even as a small, negligible tug, it was worse than any physical torture I’d endured on my own flesh—because it was a signal to Astraea’s pain.

I left without a word, with Nightsdeath already a straining, deadly force priming at the surface to discover what caused her harm.