Текст книги "Born in Chains"
Автор книги: Caris Roane
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
As she glanced around, and saw that many vampires were staring at her, she sensed a kind of group curiosity and amazement, especially since the chain she wore drew a lot of attention. Adrien’s chains were less evident, hidden as they were beneath his shirt. But as she let her own gaze wander, she noticed that a lot of women present wore chains similar to hers, though enhanced with other jewelry. There were even women with multiple chains.
From a nearby group, Gabriel joined them. She greeted him with a kiss on each cheek, something the Ancestrals tended to do. He seemed grateful that she was there, but especially Adrien, whom he clapped on the shoulder a couple of times. “Rumy has kept me informed,” he said quietly.
Adrien merely nodded, then patted Lily’s hand. She still clutched his arm, her heart pounding in her chest, thoughts bouncing rapidly from Josh, to the weapon, to Daniel and back again, over and over.
Gabriel drew a small, silk-wrapped packet from the inner pocket of his coat. He offered it to Lily. “I brought you a gift.”
She met his gaze. “You did?” She’d never been more surprised.
“With all that you’ve been through, I thought you needed this, a small gesture. No, don’t open it now.”
Lily felt the air around her waver slightly. At first, she thought she was having another revisiting vision, but the blue silk of the present, cool beneath her fingers, had begun to vibrate.
She looked down at it frowning, then back to Gabriel.
The wave-like feel of the air suddenly made sense, especially when Gabriel’s voice pierced the center of her brain. I’ve created a brief disguise and we have only a few seconds to speak, but by now you know what you’re holding; the companion chain to Adrien’s. Lily, it would be permanent but it would geometrically increase his power for every ability he possesses. Keep that in mind. You’ll have a choice to make soon. Follow your instincts and trust in Adrien’s goodness above all things.
The air warmed up, the disguise dissipated, and Gabriel turned to greet someone else. She slipped the gift into her velvet purse, her heart pounding once more.
Adrien had also turned away, perhaps because of Gabriel’s disguising skill, and she no longer held his arm. She took deep breaths and let the moment unfold.
She had with her now the companion double-chain to Adrien’s, one that would bind her to him forever. She could never escape him or this world.
But she could increase his power.
Josh, the weapon, Daniel, escape.
Double-chain, no escape. Ever.
Her gaze moved to Adrien, who turned and introduced her to a handsome couple, but she couldn’t register their names. Her ears felt full of fog.
She shook hands and Adrien passed her a glass of champagne. She smiled and nodded.
Double-chains.
She looked up at Adrien, seeing him in his element, as a man of confidence and ease among vampires, now his peers because of his rise to Ancestral status. He was already four hundred years old and would live to be much, much older.
What had Gabriel been thinking to have given her the companion double-chain?
She had a choice to make.
But her decision had long since been made the moment she gave birth to Josh. He was her priority. Her mother’s heart demanded it. She would do anything to make sure he lived.
Her gaze drifted to the dais. Daniel watched her from over the rim of his glass. He was forty feet away, at least, yet she felt as though he stood next to her.
The air began to spin.
Another revisiting vision.
She wasn’t surprised to see Daniel in the same space, but the tables were gone and he stood with another vampire. Silas.
From the past, Silas frowned. “And you think the weapon is here, in the Black Caverns?”
“There are more rumors about this place than any other site on the planet.”
“What do you want from me?”
Daniel snorted. “To help me find the damn thing.”
“Watch your blasphemy.” Silas tweaked the cuff of his robe.
A smile spread over Daniel’s face. “And you, my friend, should watch your hypocrisy.”
“But you know if I find it, I won’t let you have it.”
“And yet you just might since I can make it worth your while. You know I can.”
Silas grew very still and, after a few seconds, nodded slowly.
But at that moment Daniel turned toward Lily from within the vision and met her gaze dead-on. “Hello, Lily.” He looked around. “What is this? Ah, the annual gala.” He peered past her. “Here, at the Black Caverns. I’ll be seeing you then. I take this as a good sign. You have two children, right?”
Lily nodded.
Daniel laughed, waved his arm, and the vision vanished.
When the room came back into view, she realized two things: that Adrien had his arm around her and was asking her if she was all right, and that Daniel had raised his glass to her from across the maze of Ancestrals.
Are you all right?
Lily couldn’t answer the telepathic question. Though Daniel had shifted his attention to a beautiful African female vampire who clung to him, a hand draped high over his shoulder, she still stared at him.
The monster who had inflicted unimaginable pain on his children.
The vampire who owned sex-slave clubs specializing in human females.
The ruler determined, at all costs, to get his hands on the extinction weapon in order to control everything.
And closer to home, the man who had seen into the future, during her revisiting visions, discovered her identity and orchestrated the slaughter of her husband and daughter and the kidnapping of her son.
Lily, what’s wrong? I can feel that you’re distressed, but not like before. What’s going on?
She turned to him, aware that the other Ancestral couple looked concerned as well. But she couldn’t worry about them right now, or anyone else, only the terrible truth of her current situation and the events she would soon set into motion.
She blinked once then twice, and in the space of those few seconds, her life and purpose shifted entirely. She turned to Adrien, meeting his gaze. I’ve come to a decision. I can’t, I won’t do this anymore. I won’t be used to hunt for the extinction weapon and I sure as hell won’t turn the location over to Daniel, not now, not ever. I’ll die first.
Adrien’s arm tightened around her waist. But Lily, Daniel will kill Josh.
A lump formed in her throat and her eyes filled with tears. I’ll find him, So long as I live and breathe, I’ll travel to the ends of the earth to get him back. Now that I have a telepathic link with him, somehow I’ll find him and save him. But I’ll no longer be enslaved to Daniel, who would use the weapon to kill so many.
CHAPTER 15
Adrien fell back into his old self. That was the only way he could describe what happened to him once he understood the level of Lily’s determination to end the hunt for the weapon and find her son on her own.
But why should she have to do that? Why was she even here? How could his world have devolved so badly that a vampire like Daniel would have control over any human’s life?
Then the other half of the equation surfaced as well: Daniel still had control over Lucian and Marius. If Lily refused to go farther, would Daniel kill Adrien’s half brothers in retaliation?
When he thought of his brothers, his heart seized. After this night, would he ever see them again? He shook his head. After this night, would he even be alive?
Adrien shifted slightly to stare hard at his father. As soon as Daniel met his gaze, Adrien telepathed, You’re not getting the weapon. Not tonight. Not ever. Not so long as I have breath.
Daniel offered a half smile. Then you’re a fool, my son.
The air all around the room began to flow in strange visible waves. As Adrien glanced around, it was as though the room fell into stasis: glasses raised to lips but unmoving, gestures halted midair, bodies frozen in gala poses.
He blinked and shifted to look down at Lily.
She turned toward him. What’s happening?
Adrien released a long breath. Daniel. I challenged him, told him he wasn’t getting the weapon.
Then we’re in for it.
I need you to know that I agree with you wholeheartedly. This is the right thing to do.
She nodded, but pain flashed through her hazel eyes and his chains vibrated heavily. He knew she was terrified at severing the link to her son, but he also felt her determination to get him back. And this was a place to begin, to stand up to the monster wherever that might lead.
He watched Daniel levitate above the silent, immobile crowd of Ancestrals, floating in his powerful way.
When he arrived, he stood in front of them both but addressed Adrien. “You don’t possess a tenth of my power, which means you’re going to put your woman here through a world of hurt before the night is out. Are you ready for that?”
“We can’t let you have the weapon.” Lily’s voice sounded strong and sure.
Daniel shifted his gaze to her. “So you found it.”
She said nothing. When he tried to enthrall her, Adrien again blocked him with a thought, which brought Daniel’s gaze back to Adrien in a quick flash.
Daniel snorted. “Too bad Lily didn’t take on a double-chain. Then this might even be a challenge.” He lifted his right arm and snapped his fingers.
The wavy lines dissipated and movement and chatter began again abruptly, as though nothing had ever happened.
Adrien tried to put Lily into flight, but he couldn’t move; Daniel’s power now surrounded him. At the same time, from all four corners of the room, Daniel’s hired thugs—dressed in black—poured onto the raised stone platform, streaming through the guests who started to cry out, some in protest, some in surprise and fear.
Before Adrien could do anything, manacles, radiating with Daniel’s power, appeared in his father’s hands. A split second later Adrien wore them and now he was paralyzed, just as he had been as a boy, unable to move.
But he was no longer a child. He recalled the powerful manacles that Lily had used on him while in Rome, so Adrien summoned that same power. He could feel an effect and as his gaze shifted to Daniel, again, he watched a dart of surprise pass through the monster’s eyes.
Soon enough Daniel’s confidence returned as he exerted his energy toward the manacles.
Adrien felt them clamp down hard. This time nothing he could do moved them. His only consolation was that sweat beaded on Daniel’s forehead so Adrien knew the amount of effort he expended to strengthen the Ancestral power he’d infused the wrought iron with.
Satisfied, Daniel turned on his heel while ordering his men to bring them to the dais.
A deep half circle had formed, creating a large space in front of the dais where Daniel left Adrien and Lily.
As gasps filled the room, Daniel levitated slowly, the showman that he was, to hold himself above everyone, his men spreading out to either side of him, battle chains hanging down with the threatening blades slack at the bottom.
He moved forward just a few feet so that Adrien could see him.
Daniel waved an arm to encompass his captives. “I fear, my most beloved compatriots, that I have discovered a sinister plot in our midst coming from my son Adrien. As many of you know, he recently achieved Ancestral status, something I had hoped to celebrate this evening with all of you. Instead, what I have learned is that Adrien has bound himself to this human in order to form the outlawed tracking bond, and has been searching for the extinction weapon for the past three nights. He even embraced his Ancestral status in order to gain enough power to accomplish his goal.”
The crowd hissed at these words.
Daniel’s performance went on and on as he detailed each step of their journey, more proof that he’d been following them from the beginning. Adrien felt the hard stares of his peers.
Many, like Gabriel, knew what Daniel was up to, but a great majority believed, or chose to believe, Daniel’s lies.
Lily’s voice entered Adrien’s mind. They believe him, but how can they?
For many, this is about survival. From the moment Daniel took over the Council of Ancestrals, he’s been harassing and blackmailing the weakest. I don’t blame them. And Lily, I’m so sorry.
She might have said something in response, but Adrien had fixed his mind on the immediate future, on trying to figure a way out of this mess. He didn’t want to die, and he especially didn’t want Lily to perish—or her son.
But what could he do? If Daniel incarcerated him again, that would be one thing, but his father’s dark side reigned in this moment, and Adrien had the sense that Daniel intended to make an example of him, maybe for Lucian and Marius’s benefit.
The next moment Daniel’s voice rang out stronger than before. “Justice must be served tonight, both swift and sure. I hereby pronounce judgment on my son and the woman to whom he so unwisely bound himself, the human who led him onto this wayward path of destruction. I, Daniel, despite my love for Adrien, must order an execution, this very night, for both these traitors to our kind.”
Daniel turned and met Adrien’s gaze. An unholy light had entered the monster’s eye, something Adrien had never seen before. For the first time in his life, Adrien knew he would die at Daniel’s hand. Every time before, he sensed that his father had intended only to inflict as much suffering as he could, but not now, not this time.
“What do you say, my fellow Ancestrals? Do these traitors deserve to die?”
Shouting filled the banquet room as well as scattered calls that Adrien and Lily should be taken to the Pit.
“The Pit, the Pit,” became a horrendous chant within the obsidian cavern.
Adrien? Lily’s voice pierced his mind, a soft query against the harsh calls for their deaths.
He turned to look at her, full suddenly of all that he felt for her, his respect and admiration, his trust in her, his belief in her essential goodness, her rightness of character. And in this moment, he understood that he loved her, something he’d never before truly believed himself capable.
I love you, came from his mind.
She blinked, and her eyes filled with tears. I love you, too. A soft smile, full of affection followed, then, With all my heart, Adrien; with all my heart.
Daniel’s voice, louder than all the shouting combined, echoed through the cavern, “To the Pit!”
* * *
Lily felt disconnected from her body, as though the path she walked right now led straight into hell. Her heart beat like a mallet against a drum, so hard that the thumping resounded painfully in her ears.
Worse, she could feel Josh now and knew that with every step she took, she drew closer to him, which meant Daniel already had him at the place of execution.
How convenient that the Pit should be located in the Black Caverns.
She wanted to reach out to her son telepathically, but to do what, to tell him that they were vastly outnumbered by a mob bent on their execution?
She took another breath.
The path that apparently led to the Pit had a downward slope now and Ancestrals poured into the space from every direction, all coming straight from the banquet to watch the execution.
Was this really happening?
She still carried her purse, the one that contained the double-chain that Gabriel had given her. If she put it on now, would it do any good? And if she did, and somehow she survived, she’d be bound to a vampire forever. She’d never be able to leave Adrien, she’d never have the choice.
She drew the silk package out of her purse, letting the purse slip to the floor from her hands. As she walked, she opened the small packet and pulled the double-chain out.
Immediately she felt a vibration flow through her body.
Lily, what is that?
She opened her palm and showed him. Adrien pressed his lips together and shook his head. Won’t do a damn bit of good and if we’re able to survive, I’d hate that you were bound to me like this. You’d never be able to leave my world. Don’t even think about it.
She sighed and nodded, then wrapped the chain around and around her wrist, wearing it like a bracelet. The vibration remained, but she sensed no particular bond was being forged.
Still, she thumbed the chain with her opposing hand, wondering if there was some possible way out of this mess, something she hadn’t seen either about Daniel or the situation, or even her own abilities.
Though her heart still thumped in her ears, she focused her attention on her surroundings, on the nature of the Pit into which she was descending, on the love she had for Adrien.
She felt his rage now rising within him, that familiar terrible ire that had defined him from the moment she had first placed the binding chain around his neck.
Yes, rage had defined Adrien, rage birthed in his childhood and continuing as he watched his society’s inequities unfold.
She knew that tonight had become for him the culmination of his life experiences. He was a man who battled to keep his world in order while his father, always besieging good vampires and humans on the opposite side of justice, kept the secret world in a state of chaos.
The tunnel opened up into a huge cavern, an arena-like space, all black as the name of the resort promised, the walls in polished obsidian with intricate diamond etchings in an array of patterns. Soft light from dozens of sconces lit the space in a dim glow.
Looking up, she saw that even the ceiling had been worked well, this time in a dome of polished rock that overlooked the rows and rows of seats, all in a circle above the place of execution below.
From other hallways, Ancestrals poured into the arena filling up the seats. Lily drew in a sharp breath realizing that they’d come to watch her die. Historically, crowds often watched public executions, but in more modern times, in her human world, justice-ordered deaths occurred behind closed doors.
She wasn’t used to this on any level, including the horrifying spectator aspect of the event.
Adrien’s voice pierced her mind. I’m disgusted as well.
She moved forward and grabbed his manacled hand. He squeezed her fingers in response.
But that was the last contact she had. Quill emerged from a nearby tunnel, which caused Adrien to stiffen, drop her hand, and turn in his direction.
“Happy, brother?”Adrien spat.
Quill smiled. “More than you’ll ever know. I’ve wanted you dead for a long time, punished for your disrespect toward our father. Now let’s go.” He snapped his finger in Lily’s direction. “And bring the woman.”
The guards hefted Adrien, picking him up beneath his arms, pulling him off-balance so that he fell forward. They dragged him toward a set of stairs that led downward to the place of execution, his body thumping down the stairs the entire distance.
She cried out, “Stop it. What are you doing? He’s done nothing wrong. Daniel did this. It’s always been Daniel.”
But the crowd above shouted her down this time, calling her a liar and a traitor. Of course the closest seats were taken by Daniel’s men, so that was no surprise.
She moved quickly down the same set of stairs that led to the base of the Pit. But that’s when everything shut down for her because standing opposite, past two tables made of slabs of black granite, Josh stood staring at her, manacled at his wrists as well, a dark heavy chain looped between them.
Daniel waited beside him, his arm resting over the back of Josh’s young shoulders.
And Daniel smiled.
She stopped in her tracks, staring at the child she hadn’t seen in two years. “Josh,” she whispered.
A thrashing began deep within her soul, a need to get to him, to hold him, to protect him, to beg him to forgive her for being unable to help him.
But looking into his eyes, his expression now old beyond his years, all such maternal thoughts ceased. She grew very still as she met his gaze. Instead, she opened herself to her siphoned ability to sense what others were feeling and directed that power toward her son.
The first thing she felt was the depth of his fear, which he’d been living with for two years, fear of his situation, of the guards around him, of the arm resting across his shoulders. So much fear, which prompted another resurgence of her mother-guilt and a second internal flailing.
But again, the serenity in Josh’s eyes stopped what was useless in this situation.
What she felt next, however, was a determination so similar to what Adrien exuded, her heart finally began to settle.
“I love you,” she called out.
He didn’t speak, but nodded slowly and never lost eye contact. So restrained, so grown-up, long before he should have been, all the heinous signs that he’d been through a severe trauma.
Josh was taller now at ten and came to Daniel’s shoulder. His hair was slicked back and his cheekbones looked sharp, as if he hadn’t been fed as well as he should have, or maybe he’d been unable to eat. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans, and he was barefoot. Even from here she could see that his feet were filthy. But a child without shoes was a child who couldn’t run away.
Maybe more than any other thing the sight of his feet did her in. Something inside her began to scream. She arched her neck and let the sound pour out of her. She screamed until her lungs ached and her vocal cords could take no more.
When she stopped, she was staring up at the tall domed ceiling at least five stories up.
And the crowd was finally silent.
When she looked back at Josh, it was Daniel who caught her eye. His gaze had a foggy appearance and his lips were slack. No doubt he was euphoric because she’d just given him exactly what he craved the most: the suffering of others, the pain of others.
When she glanced at Josh again, his eyes were tight and he mouthed something. It took her several seconds before she understood he was saying, simply, Mom. She nodded and using her telepathy said, I’m okay now. I love you, Josh. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
He didn’t say anything in response, but held his lips together tightly, two white lines.
So here she was, Lily Haven of Deer Valley, Arizona, and of Manhattan, soon to be executed, standing halfway between her kidnapped son and the man she loved, with no way out.
* * *
The sounds of Lily screaming her anguish at the sight of her son had quieted Adrien, had brought him out of his rage and into the present moment. His senses sharpened as the emotions of the now silent spectators hummed through his veins.
The guards grabbed him once more. Though he resisted, he was quickly overpowered, picked up, and thrown onto a hard slab of granite, one of two altar-like tables in the Pit. More chains were wrapped around him, securing him, chains that held Daniel’s powerful signature and kept him immobile.
He stared up at the tall, curved black ceiling, his mind rolling backward to being a child. How many times had he been in this position, chained to a table and subjected to knife cuts, delivered close-up so that Daniel could watch him suffer? How many times? A hundred? A thousand?
And how much Lily’s screams had fed the beast that lived inside Daniel, the one that needed the pain of others to thrive and to be satisfied.
He didn’t want his father to win so Adrien lay very still, gathering his thoughts. He had to figure this out. He’d gained Ancestral status. Surely there was some way to access his power and overcome the chains.
The guards moved Lily in the direction of the second table. Surprisingly, mother and son didn’t speak, but then what could be said? He’d watched Josh’s reaction to his mother’s screams, he even remembered what that was like. How young he had been when his own mother had screamed her pain, her anguish.
But he wouldn’t bring those memories to this table.
This table belonged to now and not to the past. This table was about creating a new set of memories.
He glanced at his father, who smiled. Of course.
Join me, Adrien. Daniel’s voice pierced his mind. And all this will end. I will even spare the human’s life and her son’s. Just say you will serve me and I will end this suffering.
For a split second he considered agreeing to it, if for no other reason than to spare Lily and Josh, but reason returned.
He also knew that Daniel wouldn’t keep his word. He’d never let Lily and Josh go.
Adrien responded with a single word: Never.
How unfortunate, but have it as you will.
* * *
Lily stood beside the granite slab, a guard on each side of her, as she waited to be chained to her place of execution. She didn’t look at Josh again. How could she without falling into another round of screaming anguish.
Quill’s voice, loud and strong, sounded through the arena as he stated again the reason for the execution, the illegal hunt for the extinction weapon.
The crowd responded with shouts and condemnation.
Her eyes began to burn. Once more she looked up at the gleaming black dome of the ceiling. She had heard that in a spiritual sense obsidian meant “truth.”
What was the truth of this situation? Why was she here? What had gotten her here? Why was she trapped in a way that prevented her from helping either her son or the man she loved?
From the time of her husband’s and daughter’s deaths, grief had dominated her life, a pain so deep that for a long time, until she’d been contacted with news that Josh was alive, she’d felt nothing but a numbing pain without end. She had lived that pain and it had ridden her hard, for months turned to years.
Meeting Adrien had been like setting a lit match to a gasoline-soaked bonfire of sexual and emotional need. Her relationship with him had simply exploded until now that bonfire burned in her heart.
She loved him, a new love born out of this impossible situation.
Grief was still with her and she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would grieve for those she’d lost until she drew her last breath.
But the chains had birthed something new in her. She’d come alive in the course of the past few nights, alive in ways never before imagined, bursting with strength and passion, and the awareness that she was bound to a vampire in a way that gave her unexpected powers and the ability to live in a secret vampire world.
In a sudden revelation, she understood the lesson of the chains, of her bondage to Adrien, of what they’d become over the past three nights: Their real power came from working together, back and forth, functioning as a team.
But in what way could she work with him now?
She glanced down at the double-chain wrapped around her wrist and began to loosen and unfurl it until it hung in a long loop from her hand. Time seemed to slow. The double-chain, once she put it on, would mean a final commitment to Adrien, to being with him forever, inseparable. There would be no way to remove this chain, to leave Adrien behind, and she’d never be able to return to the human world in any normal sense.
Yet as she stared at the chain and heard the crowd as through a fog calling for her death, she knew this was where she wanted to be, with Adrien, nothing held back. From her right, she saw a manacle lifted in her direction as the guard prepared to bind her and secure her to the granite table.
In a swift move she flipped the double-chain over her head and felt it fall around her neck, as the guard seized her wrist and secured her with the heavy wrought iron.
Immediately the chain began to vibrate. Power swirled around her.
“Lily, what have you done?”
She met Adrien’s gaze and smiled. What I should have done the moment Gabriel gave me the chain.
But you’ll be bound to me permanently.
She smiled. I don’t want to be anywhere else.
In that moment she opened her heart to Adrien as she never had before. She let all her grief go as she focused her thoughts on him, letting her love flow in his direction, letting him know that she loved him more than life itself.
All this she sent through the chains that bound them.
* * *
Adrien shifted as best he could so that he could see Lily, to watch her as the double-chain came to life between them, a sealing of their fates together, now and forever.
But mostly he felt her love, her eyes glowing with emotion, with all that she felt for him. It meant more to him than words could ever express that she would have donned a chain that bound her to him. Even if this was to be the last moment of his life, and hers, that she had done this thing filled his heart with joy.
“I love you,” she called to him. “And I always will.”
“I love you, too.”
“Silence,” Daniel shouted.
Adrien felt the weight of the chains on his body, chains he had known ever since he could remember, maybe even since birth. Yes, he’d been born in chains and lived chained up, whether mentally or more recently chained in a cavern and tortured with whips and clubs.
Now he felt the chains again, so heavy that they pressed into his soul and mired him in the moment, sank him deep. He couldn’t believe he was here again, knowing not only that he would die soon, but that the woman he had come to love over the past several days would also die—along with the boy she’d given birth to ten years ago, her beloved son, the remnant of her family.
Adrien turned to look at his sire, at the man who had spawned him, who had given him life, standing in his arrogance beside the boy.
Daniel looked back, his eyes glittering, his desire to inflict pain rising once more.
Adrien knew that look well.
Pain always followed.
He closed his eyes, unwilling to let Daniel feed off his suffering and pain. Instead, he focused on Lily and her love, and on the chains vibrating powerfully at his neck. He opened himself to experiencing what she felt right now. What came to him was her love, that she found him worthy and noble, that in this moment nothing else mattered. He felt her strength as well, that despite the horror of the Pit she could reach out to him, willing him to know that she loved him, though she would soon die.
That love, which she gave so easily, which was just who she was, began to move through his soul like a healing river.
For the first time in his life, he let his rage go, all that horrible anger that had lived in him like a festering wound.
He allowed other feelings in, the better ones, the ones he’d learned from those vampires who lived in close-knit communities, like Alfonse and Giselle, and more recently from Lily, about love, about forgiveness, about opening his heart to another person and trusting that good things would follow.
