Page 22

Luc

We spent another two days hiding away at Louis’s hotel. It was wonderful, just the two of us, lying in bed, making love and getting better. When she slept, I rested, staying away from my phone, purposefully.

I couldn’t save all of the vampires or win the war on my own. There were so many different players, each with their own agenda. My mission was to find out who had killed Matteo and I was at my wits end trying to solve this.

I was beginning to accept the possibility that we may not win the war with the shifters. If that was the case, I would go back to my land in the North. I’d been thinking of taking Ruby there, to show her the fields and the horses. When I’d told her about the bees and the honey produced on the farm, her eyes had lit up with excitement. The starbursts and wild lilies were flowering now and the caretaker had sent me pictures of them. I’d showed them to her.

“It’s a different kind of life there. Slow,” I said.

“No dancing on tables or strippers with poles?” Ruby teasingly asked me.

“Do you think you could cope with that?” I asked her, pulling her close to me. We were lying in bed, with the shutters drawn. Our fifth day of being together. I’d never been this happy.

“Oh, I might struggle initially,” she grinned, “but in time, I might. With practice.”

She lay quietly in my arms for a while, then she said. “I think I want to go see my mother.”

I had been expecting this.

Phone reception had been spotty and we had only been able to reach the hospital on occasion. A nurse had reassured us that Ruby’s mother was doing well. They had started a new kind of medication, which was only available in the capital and she was responding well but I could see Ruby was worried. Our time away from the world was coming to an end. I felt a pang of regret at the thought.

“I probably need to go to the Capital anyway,” I said with a sigh.

“Are you up for the travel? I will get us a car. It will be more comfortable that way?”

She nodded. She was looking much better. The swelling in her face had gone down and the bruises had faded a bit. Her bruised rib was still bothering her, but being in bed and having slow, gentle sex, seemed to have a magical healing effect on her.

While she got ready to leave, I checked in with Tick at the Castle.

“Where have you been?” she hissed at me. “Things have gone mad here! I’ve been trying to get hold of you! I thought something must have happened!

I explained about being injured and spending a few days recovering.

“Well, you haven’t missed much,” she said sarcastically. “Just… it seems we’ve lost the war. There is talk of a peace agreement. Shifters keep the South and we keep the capital.”

“What about the energy plants?” I asked.

“Exactly, that is part of the negotiations. I don’t know but they have wiped out our blood supplies. They ambushed our forces coming from Hersina.”

“How? The Hersina vampires are ferocious!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“I don’t know. I heard they only sent a small force. They didn’t want to back the king.”

I put down the phone, struggling to come to terms with this news. The old houses were withdrawing support from Vlas, as if they wanted him to lose. To back a new winner? I felt I was onto something here, even bigger than the war. Perhaps Matteo had become caught up in a struggle for power. Wrong place, wrong time?

I called Harris and this time he answered. I asked him if the news was true about the war.

His voice was grave. “I will tell you this in confidence. The king has no appetite to rule anymore. He has been in bed this whole past week. I’ve been trying to convince the rulers in the Capital that the vampires will not attack humans if our blood supplies run out. Right now, we have to protect our supplies and production plants to ensure we keep the humans on our side.”

“And if we lose the gas works?”

“I know,” his voice was grave. “We will take a hit, but it’s not our only source of income. We have the mines in the north and big reserves in the banks. It may be our best option now. Where have you been, anyway? I could use your help with the negotiations. General Almera has been handling it, but he doesn’t have the best bedside manner with the humans.”

I knew what he was talking about. The president of the council was a wizard from the old country. He was wise and experienced and we’d always had a good working relationship. I told Harris I’d represent the vampires at the peace talks.

“You sound different?” he asked me, and I detected a note of concern in his voice. “I’ve heard talk about you and a girl?” I wasn’t surprised that he’d heard about Ruby.

“I’m all right…” I said. “It’s this war, it has taken a toll on me. The business with Alexandra, Matteo… it was good to have time to think. The girl has nothing to do with it.”

It wasn’t true, though. I knew it too.

Now that I had tasted love, had wrapped myself in it and felt its power, healing and protectiveness, I didn’t want to give it up. I knew it was worth holding on to.

“As long as you still have some fight in you,” Harris said. “We need to be firm on the North. That and the capital remains ours. We must be able to access the South too. We will need to form agreements on that.”

I wasn’t looking forward to these negotiations.

We set out for the Capital soon after that and arrived at the hospital in the late afternoon.

I asked for the doctor and asked to be taken to see Ruby’s mother. She had been booked in under the name Sadie Thompson. Dennington had assured me that he’d shared the name with no-one else.

Ruby was excited, she couldn’t wait to see her mother.

When we reached the ward, she rushed inside. Her mother had been allocated a private room. She was lying on the bed, her eyes closed. Ruby stopped at the bed and turned to me, horrified.

“This isn’t my mother!”

“What?”

Her eyes went wide with terror as she turned back to the bed. “It’s not my mom! I don’t know who this is?! Where is my mother?!”

I called Dennington and he assured me that he had personally escorted Charlotte Lucas in the ambulance on the hospital transfer but he didn’t know what she looked like. Ruby had been ill, I had not asked her for a photograph.

“Where is my mother?!” Ruby cried out. “What’s happened to her?”

Dennington apologized, he stammered, “I can’t understand it! I asked for the nurses to take me to her, when I found her, I asked her if she was Ruby’s mother and she said yes! I am so sorry.”

“This is unacceptable!” I struggled to control my anger. “How is this possible? You will go to the hospital right away and find out what the mix up is. We need to find Ruby’s mother as soon as possible!”

Ruby interrupted me, “We need to go there, right now!”

I had promised Harris I would head up with the negotiating team later in the day, but Ruby needed me, I had to find her mother.

Captain Dennington promised to come fetch Ruby and take her to the hospital where she had been before. “Bring a couple of men, in case,” I said, lowering my voice. “We don’t know what we’ll find there. She may have been kidnapped.”

Ruby was pacing up and down. I could see she was distraught. She feared the shifters had taken her mother, perhaps had even killed her.

“She’s not strong, Luc, she won’t survive being in the tunnels like I was,” she whispered.

She was crying now, shaking all over. I took her in my arms. “I will find out what happened, I promise you.”

She pulled away and I saw doubt in her eyes.

“Are you coming with me?”

“I will meet you and Dennington later. I have to go to the peace talks.”

“I see,” Ruby said, turning away from me, a hardness in her eyes.

“I have to do this, Ruby,” I said but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I felt like I was losing her. Everything we had been through, the wonderful days at the hotel, all seemed to disappear like the afternoon fog.

“Do what you have to do,” she said in a flat voice, walking away from me.

“Ruby, wait!” I called out to her but she wouldn’t turn around.

I couldn’t let her walk away from me like that.

I went after her.

“Ruby!”

She turned around, her face wet with tears.

“I think they got her, Luc. They told me they would. I can’t believe that I was lying in bed with you, having sex and thinking only of myself while they tortured and killed her.”

“You don’t know that, don’t jump to conclusions,” I urged her.

“We got away. I tricked them! Of course they are going to punish her to get to me!” she was crying again and I tried to take her in my arms to comfort her.

But she broke away from me.

“I need to get to my mother!” she said, running away.

“I will come as soon as I can!” I called after her but I didn’t know if she heard me.