A Shade Of Vampire 6: A Gate Of Night (12 page)

Kiev’s eyes flickered with anger. He grabbed me by the jaw. He gripped hard, enough to make me yelp in pain. “I would think that you already know better than that, Sofia. Your husband wasn’t what he once was, and even at the height of his power, he was a slave to this place. Just like you are now,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t irk me further by talking about these daydreams of yours.”

I glared at him, my sense of defiance and independence rising over my fear of him. Just to annoy him further, I looked him straight in the eye, and continued to talk about Derek. “He’s going to come for me and you know it. He’s going to hold my child in his arms and he’s going to be a great father. He already managed to escape this place, didn’t he? What makes you think he won’t know how to return?”

Kiev frowned, his grip tightening. For a minute, I thought he was going to hit me, but then I was reminded of who was going to suffer for what I did.

“I’m sorry,” I quickly breathed out. “I just… I’m sorry, Kiev.”

“Olga’s going to have a rough night thanks to you.” He didn’t seem pleased with the prospect, his fists clenching.

I wondered whether he was clenching them to defend Olga or to punish her. With him, I never knew. Most of the time, he seemed to really care about the young girl. I even thought it hurt him more to cause her pain than it did me.

“Don’t hurt her. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

He pushed my face away, my head jerking backwards. “Olga told me that you asked her where the food you’re being given comes from. I want to know why.”

I answered with a shrug. “I’m just curious. I have no idea where this place is. I was just wondering where The Blood Keep gets its food.”

“Really? You’re just wondering? You’re not snooping around trying to figure out an exit from this place?”

I swallowed hard. “Like that’s possible.” I wrinkled my nose as I eyed the guard dog following me everywhere.

Kiev snapped his fingers and Shadow approached.

Shadow growled and snarled as he stepped toward Kiev. The animal wasn’t that much of a fan of Kiev either. Kiev didn’t seem to care. He bared his claws and dug their pointed ends into Shadow’s fur, making the creature whimper, but to my surprise, it neither attacked nor cowered away from Kiev.

“Escape is not possible,” Kiev said, “and we both know it, but I think you’re crazy enough to try.”

I grimaced, uncomfortable at seeing Shadow in pain. “Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”

“You feel sorry for the beast?” Kiev’s eyes sparked with curiosity.

“It has done you no wrong.”

“If only you knew what it did to your husband when he was still here.”

“So you admit it. Derek isn’t here anymore? He was actually able to escape?”

Kiev just chuckled. “Don’t get any ideas into that pretty little head of yours, Sofia. Olga’s like a daughter to me, but I wouldn’t hesitate to kill her should you even attempt an escape.”

Like a daughter.
I had to wonder what kind of relationship Kiev had with Olga. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, but it was perhaps one of the most demented, unhealthy relationships I’d ever seen.
This beats even Claudia’s crazy.
Still, Olga meant something to him.

“You miss The Shade, don’t you?”

“My heart aches just thinking of everything I left behind there.”

“It may not be as you remember it. I don’t see what you love so much about the place. It didn’t look all that great to me last time I paid a visit.”

Paid a visit? Is that all you did?
I had a bad feeling about the state of The Shade at that point. “It’s not the place that makes it home, Kiev. It’s the people there… people I love.”

I glanced his way. I was desperate for an ally, a companion, someone I could talk to who wasn’t going to scare the life out of me—like Kiev—or wasn’t trembling at the thought of speaking to me—like Olga.

“I’m about to give birth to my first child, Kiev. This is my first pregnancy. Would it be so bad if you brought someone from home to help me through this?”

“Am I not enough for you, Sofia?”

No, you’re not.
“Kiev, please…”

“Who do you have in mind?”

My heart leapt at the thought that he might be considering it. My first instinct was to request Corrine, but I highly doubted that Kiev would ever agree to bring a witch into The Blood Keep. She was simply too much of a threat. The next person who came to mind was Eli Lazaroff. Surely with all the knowledge he accumulated, he’d know a thing or two about pregnancies. Also, considering how pale and lanky he appeared, he wasn’t much of a threat to anyone.

“I’m thinking of Eli Lazaroff.”
Of course, he’s also smart. Maybe he can figure out a way for us to get out of here.
“He could be a huge asset here, you know.” I had to choose my words carefully. “Eli can help with my pregnancy. I’d feel so much more at ease with him around.”

“You really want this, don’t you?”

“Kiev, I need this.”

“Just eat.”

I took the last of the apple slices and bit into it. I was trying not to place any of my hopes on the possibility that Kiev would agree to bringing Eli into The Blood Keep.
Come on, Sofia. Why would you even want to endanger Eli this way?
I began to wonder if I had made a mistake even suggesting that Eli be brought to The Blood Keep.
I doubt he’ll be very thrilled by the idea of being held captive here with me.

“How did you know?” Kiev asked after I’d eaten my last bite—his eyes never leaving me while I was absent-mindedly finishing my meal.

“Know what?”

“That he had good in him?”

For someone who wanted me to forget Derek, I was surprised that Kiev would bring Derek up as a topic of conversation. He seemed strangely interested in how Derek had turned away from darkness and come to light. We’d had this talk before. I wasn’t in the mood to answer, because talking about my love story with Derek only made me miss him more. Missing him more made me want to ask Kiev questions that made the red-eyed vampire want to hurt me. As much as I wanted to speak about Derek, conversations that involved him never ended without a bruise or two from Kiev.

I tilted my head to the side and drawled out my own question. “How did
you
know?”

His lips tightened. “Are we going to go at this again, Sofia? This questioning? Can you not answer my question like a normal person?”

Annoyed, I just stared at him and repeated my question. “How did you know, Kiev?”

“You stubborn little minx.”

Stubborn little minx.
I smiled, remembering all the times Derek had referred to me that way.

Seeing that I wasn’t about to play this game on his terms, Kiev relented. “Fine. I’ll play,” he spat out. “How do I know
what
, Sofia?”

“How did you know I was pregnant? You seemed to know even before you took Derek and me here.”

“We’ve had our eye on you ever since you left The Shade for your honeymoon. Your children… they’re important to us.”

“Children?”

“Twins. A boy and a girl.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s one of the things I learned from Emilia. How to tell if a woman is pregnant, what the child is going to be. It’s always useful to know.”

“Why?” The smirk on his face told me that I wasn’t going to like the answer to that question.

“Let’s just say that a pregnant woman is quite a scrumptious delicacy to our kind. I’m surprised the Elder hasn’t tried to take your blood.”

I’m surprised you haven’t recently.
I’d seen countless times the way he would lick his lips as he stared at the nook of my neck as if he was a man starving for months.

As if he could read my mind, he chuckled. “Don’t think I haven’t been tempted to drink from you, Sofia. The further along your pregnancy is, the more tempting it is to drink, but I can’t give in, because I won’t be able to restrain myself from bleeding you dry.”

It’s so strange how hearing that has become so commonplace to me.
I thought back to the time when life had been simple and I was a teenager trying to cope with everyday normal things. Ben’s face—his smile—came to mind. I hadn’t seen Abby since Clara took her from the dungeon. I kept asking where she was but I wasn’t given an answer.

Instead, I was told to relax and take care of myself.
Relax.
The idea sickened me.
Relax while I’m constantly afraid that you might have killed my husband. Relax, while Abby, who is practically my little sister, is in the hands of one of the most capricious and cruel vampires I’ve ever met. Relax while I bear two children who are in danger the moment I give birth to them.

Relax while everything I love and live for is slipping away from me. Relax while I lose all control of my life. Relax, while I sit here trying to avoid a conversation with this red-eyed monster, who just confessed to craving my blood more and more every day.

Relax, Sofia.
I repeated the words to myself over and over again. The only thing that got me through each day at The Blood Keep was the conviction:
Derek is coming.

If not, I will find a way to get to him.

To my delight, when I opened my eyes after a long night’s sleep, I found a familiar man sitting on a chair near my bed, waiting for me to wake up.

“Hello, my queen. I was told you requested my presence.”

Eli Lazaroff.

Five months.
I’d been at The Sanctuary for five months. I knew nothing about what was happening back home at The Shade. Even worse, I knew nothing about what had happened to my wife at The Blood Keep.

During my time at The Sanctuary, I was given spacious living quarters on the top floor of what seemed like the tallest building in the city, where servants sought after my needs. I tried to converse with some of them, but none of them ever spoke to me. I didn’t even know their names. Whenever I addressed them, they ignored me. They seemed to hate me, though I wasn’t sure why.

The only people who talked to me were the Ageless and Ibrahim, the warlock assigned to mentor me. And I wasn’t allowed to leave my quarters, except for when I was training.

Five months had revealed things about myself that I never thought possible. I had my strength back—probably more than I’d had when I was a vampire.

My ability to heal was back. Though it didn’t happen as quickly as when I was a vampire, whenever I healed, I was stronger than before I was wounded.

My agility was also back. Again, not the same speed as I’d had when I was a vampire, but definitely far quicker than a human was supposed to be. My heightened senses had also returned.

But what the vampire curse had suppressed all these years was something beyond my imagining—fire. I had the ability to conjure fire. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why, but I did. What I didn’t have was the ability to control it and since the witches had introduced me to this ability, ever since the first time fire came out of my fingers, harnessing the power had proven to be difficult.

Whenever I asked where all these powers came from, I was given a cryptic answer about Cora investing much of her power in me. It was no secret that during my four-hundred-year slumber, Cora had placed some sort of spell on me that made me more powerful. Maybe she’d been channeling power from The Sanctuary to me all along.

I’d never understood why the Ageless allowed it if she knew that Cora was doing this, or how she couldn’t have known considering how powerful she seemed to be.

All I knew was that once a witch’s power took over a human being, it did things to that person, and since I was a vampire when it happened… it had placed those powers in a state of preservation so that when it came out, it came out in uncontrollable bursts.

The witch and warlock tried to help me take control of the power, making me spend most of my time in their realm trying to do something that even they didn’t seem to fully understand.

I was standing in the midst of a wide open field surrounded by small lakes, staring at a round target—one I wanted to destroy simply because I was tired of being held captive in the witch’s realm.

“Relax, Derek,” Ibrahim said in his deep, soothing voice. “You won’t be able to harness your power unless you learn to calm down.”

“Calm down?” I uttered through gritted teeth, sensing heat creep from the blades of my shoulders down to the tips of my fingers. “I want to see my wife!” A ray of fire burst out of my palms, burning not only the target, but everything else in its path.

I tried to control it, but I couldn’t.

“You have to control your rage!” Ibrahim screamed through the chaos, standing behind me, making sure that he was out of the fire’s way.

“The vampire’s curse kept you cold,” was the Ageless’ simple explanation and nothing else was said after.

That morning, under the blazing heat of the sun, I was half-wishing that I was a vampire again, because nothing I knew to do could make me calm down. The fire was beyond my control.

I shut my eyes and tried to imagine Sofia. Five months was far too long to be away from my bride. I was afraid I would forget her face. I was afraid that… I couldn’t even think about it. Tears began to brim my eyes as visions of her smile, her laughter, her warmth came to me. Her soft kisses back at the dungeon haunted me—the memory, just like the kisses themselves, was both sweet and painful at the same time.

So wrapped up in cherished memories of my beloved, I lost track of what was happening around me and I found myself kneeling on the ground, sobbing.

“That’s it. That’s how you do it.” Ibrahim sounded beyond relieved. He’d probably been afraid that I would burn The Sanctuary down. “You need to learn control.” He snapped his fingers and a strong, cool wind blew the fire away before it could spread.

Just then, the familiar form of the Ageless appeared from the horizon, walking toward us in a slow, steady stride. Sympathy flashed in her eyes when she saw me but that quickly disappeared when she addressed Ibrahim in a curt tone. “How is he doing?”