Blind Salvage (3 page)

In the back of the cab, Pamela hummed a song under her breath, her toes tapping the floor. She was obviously restless, and though my body was still, I wasn’t much better. I pushed Agent Valley and his request for help with Orion aside in favor of other things. My mind swirled back to my conversation with
Doran
, just before he left for the states. A conversation I hadn’t even shared with Liam.

“Rylee, I need to speak with you.” Doran put a hand to my elbow, quickly dropping it when I glared at him. He wasn’t cowed by me, but I’d saved his ass by breaking the bond between him and Berget, and he wasn’t likely to forget that. That gained me some leverage that I would use whenever I had to.

He owed me and I would use that to benefit the salvages I would go after. We knew where we stood with each other, which was as it should be.

He led the way to the rooftop, the night sky clear of clouds for what had to be the first time since I’d been in London. The bite of the wind reminded me of home, and a longing to be away from this place shot through me. I knew that it had less to do with sleeping in my own bed than it did with all that had happened here. All that I’d had to fight through and the secrets that had been uncovered, even the questions that had yet to be answered.

Eve slept deeply off to one side, her head tucked under her wing, feathers ruffling in the breeze. At least if Doran acted up, I had back up. Not that I was worried, not really. More than once Doran had the chance to kill me, or at least the chances had presented themselves on a number of occasions.

I kept my voice low, so as not to disturb the Harpy. She didn’t do well being startled awake. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

“I think you need to understand what happened with the vampires, how Berget became what she is. I can give you everything I know. Which is a lot in some ways, and not near enough in others.” His green eyes were serious, something Doran didn’t do often. It made him look more mature, far less the punk rock boy he presented to the world, and more the powerhouse Shaman I knew he was. There was no teasing light in him, no double entendre to piss me off. This shift in him was almost as worrisome as his lack of control when he first showed up in London.

I turned my back to him and set my hands on my hips. I wanted to know, I needed to understand. But I had a feeling that knowing wasn’t going to make me feel any better about Berget and this current situation. I blew out a sharp breath between my teeth and turned back to Doran. “Tell me.”

He dove right in. “You understand that Berget was initially taken because of her blood, that she was one of those our kind can’t resist?” He lifted an eyebrow at me.

I nodded. “
Louisa
told me that, the first time I visited her.”

Doran clasped his hands in front of him and pursed his lips. “She was taken to be a gift to the Emperor and the Empress. A blood gift to secure the favor of
Faris’
old master. That is why he was sent to steal her away.”

I grit my teeth. I was angry with Faris, but even angrier with myself that I’d let myself trust him, let myself believe that a vampire could be trusted. He was the start of all my troubles, the one who’d stolen Berget away and had set me on the path I’d walked since then. Regardless of who had ordered it, in my mind this all fell squarely on him.

“Are you telling me it wasn’t his fault?” Eyes narrowed, I glared at Doran.

He shrugged, unperturbed. “Most of those that are Fanged do not have the luxury of doing what we want. Depending on who holds the reins of power we can be used as they see fit.”

I could blame Faris for his lies, that was straight forward. But maybe I couldn’t blame him for taking Berget. I shook myself and pushed away
that
thought. No, I’d seen Faris there, seen the light of hunger in his eyes. He’d been hoping for a taste of her too.

Doran’s eyes slid to half-mast as he spoke. “When they got her back to Venice for the Emperor and Empress, it was apparent that the Empress was taken with her youthful beauty and sweet disposition.”

Six years old, Berget had been only six when she was taken. My guts rolled with disgust. “What do you mean by ‘taken’?”

The Daywalker shook his head. “Not like that.” He took a breath and shook his head again before he went on. “Vampires can’t procreate; they can’t have children unless they steal them. It was immediate, the bond the Empress had with Berget. I knew the Empress; she was my master before Berget. It was more than a bond of mother and child. It was almost like the Empress saw a future for Berget. Which wouldn’t surprise me since the Empress was a Reader long before she was a vampire. In the end, she chose to keep and raise Berget rather than … .” His eyes opened and he stared into mine, the air between us chilling. “It would have been better if they’d killed her, if there had been nothing more than a meal in your sister’s future.”

I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into the palms of my hands, the minor pain welcome and easier to focus on. It didn’t matter that I knew Doran was right. I just hated to hear him say it, hated that the truth sucked so badly.

“Keep going.”

“They kept her secluded, let her feed off them. That is the start of Becoming.”

The first memory Faris had shown me, I’d seen tiny bite marks all over the Empress’ body. Now I knew them for what they were. Berget’s bite marks. Nausea rolled up, hot and acrid as it coated the back of my tongue. I clamped my mouth shut, clenching my teeth until they ached. Doran waited for me, letting me absorb his words at my own pace.

My heart rate slowed back down and I waved him to go on, afraid that if I opened my mouth, I’d spew chunks all over the roof.

“I cannot tell you the ritual of how a vampire is created, but” —he unclasped his hands to set them on his hips— “you will have to trust me that what I’m telling you is the truth, as far as I am able to share it with you. Becoming a vampire, it takes time. There is no instant creation—a one night blood exchange—as some would have you believe. Berget, the Berget you knew, became buried under the blood she was taking, of what she was becoming. Glimpses of her showed from time to time. A child full of love and compassion. I had hope that things would be better with her as a leader. But then … .” He shook his head. “I was there, when Faris killed her parents—”

I snorted and he lifted a hand to stall me.

“They
were
the only parents she recalled at that point. They’d made sure of it. And she saw Faris and his three brothers take on her parents. His brothers were killed, but he survived, barely, and finished the job, taking the Empress’ head and heart. Berget saw it all. She was fourteen at the time.”

I managed to speak around gut churning nausea. “That doesn’t explain everything. She knows me still. It’s not like her memories are all gone.”

Doran stepped closer to me, almost as if he would give me a hug. I didn’t step back, and he didn’t encircle me with his arms.

“When the Empress and Emperor died, they spilled their auras to her, giving her their abilities, their powers, the bonds they held over those that called them master, as well as their memories. She did not lose her own memories, but they are faint with the past staining them, and those older memories coating them. She is a child carrying the power of two ancient vampires and all that they know. She does not have the strength of mind to handle this, very few would. She is going mad. Slowly, but very surely.”

“And I suppose you want me to do something about it? Kill her and end her reign of madness?” Fuck, everyone thought I could be this supposed demon slayer or whatever the hell the prophecies were spouting. Why not be a slayer of psychotic vampires too? The thing was, a large part of me did want to save her, to bring back the little sister I so wanted to believe was buried inside. What if she could be separated from those memories and all that power? Could she possibly be brought back to some semblance of the Berget who was my sister?

He dipped his head so that we were cheek to cheek. Intimate, yet I wasn’t getting that ‘take me baby’ vibe from him. “No, this is information. Information you need so that if the chance comes, you don’t hold back. She is not your sister. What is left of her soul is … not gone, but missing. All that is left is what they were. If there is a way to free her, I do not know it.” His breath was cool against my skin as he breathed each word into me.

“Tyrants, that’s what lives inside her. Mad, power hungry tyrants who want to rule the world, both the humans and the supernaturals. That cannot happen.”

I closed my eyes, grief spilling up through me. You’d think that after all these years of hurting, of saying goodbye to her over and over in my head, that this moment would be easier. Yet it wasn’t. Because for a few brief weeks, I’d thought I’d be able to have my little sister back. That I could heal up some of the gaping wounds in my soul I’d pasted over with brash words and a hard exterior. It just wasn’t to be and the wounds haunting me cracked and bled with a pain I didn’t know how to stem as Doran’s words sunk in. The hope I’d clung to faded to a feeble whisper as it died inside of me.

His hands skimmed up my arms, fingers light against my damp bare skin. “I’m sorry, Rylee. I truly am.”

I just stood there, eyes closed, waiting for more. His hands slid off my arms as the distant rumble of thunder rolled toward us, bringing another storm.

Even with my eyes closed, I could tell we were getting close to our drop off. The road got rough, bumps and drops jarring me from any semblance of rest. My brain wouldn’t let go of what Doran had told me. He hadn’t answered all the questions I had, but I wasn’t ready to ask them yet either, so that was fine by me. Like what he knew of the Blood that both Berget and Faris wanted me to find for them to secure their leadership.

“Why didn’t we just have Will take us? He has a car that would fit us all.” Pamela’s voice pulled me out of my reverie.

I turned to her, an eyebrow arching up. “Really? You have to ask that?”

She blushed. Yeah, she just wanted one more glimpse of Will. “You don’t think they’d really fight, do you?”

The upside was she didn’t know
why
Will and Liam didn’t like each other. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that the man she had a crush on had a bit of a thing for me. No, that wouldn’t go over well with a teenage witch whose hormones were, on a good day, all over the map. So I fudged it.

“Alphas can rarely be in the same room together. It’s just the way they’re hardwired. They will end up fighting if they stay in close proximity. Just one more reason for us to go home.”

“Will could control himself; it’s Liam that can’t,” she said, her nose turning up with a snobbery that only came to her when she spoke about Will.

I snorted. Nothing Will ever did would be bad in her eyes. Nor would she see that he was pushing hard to get Liam to step away from me. Again, I wasn’t going to explain that part to her. “Right, whatever.”

The cabbie pulled off to the side of the road, where we’d asked to be dropped. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere. From here, the directions were straight forward. Follow the dirt path to the rundown castle at the end of the road. Easy peasy.

We stepped out of the car, grabbed our bags, and paid our fare. The cabbie turned his car around, and then headed back down the poorly kept road to the main thoroughfare. As the cab disappeared over a hump in the road, a rustle from the bushes turned us both around.

“Tell me you brought clothes.” Liam said, standing strategically behind a bush so that he didn’t flash Pamela. I reached into my bag and tossed him a shirt and pair of jeans, and the last pair of shoes I had in his size. With all his shifting, we were going through clothes like crazy.