Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) (6 page)

“Dear brother, what have they done to you?” She turned to the Proxim. “Why is he chained?”

He dismissed her with a sidelong glance. “You of all people know that, Kisana.”

“He is my brother.”

Daneo’s lip curled cruelly. “Your mother’s son, yes. Until the Council rules otherwise, which it will not, he will stay restrained.” He clicked toward the sentry, who stepped from where he had been concealed behind the silken screen. “And Avrel and I will be watching him.”

Turning his back on Kisana and myself, he strode to the low table in the far corner of the tent and poured wine from a decanter into a goblet.

“He is a guest,” Kisana insisted. “Have we become such poor hosts that we would deny guests nourishment or comfort?”

I sensed an undercurrent of pain between them. Were they lovers ... or something else? My sister’s hazel eyes were wells of accusation and hurt as she looked at him.

Daneo flung his long hair back from his face to sip from the silver goblet. “Do not test me, Kisana,” he growled as he set it back down. “There is too much of your mother in you.”

“Or not enough.” She scowled back, defiant. “Perhaps that is why I will never replace her for you.”

Whatever they were, they were not good hosts. But let my sister pretend I was a guest and not their captive. What harm would it do me?

“You never knew her!” Daneo made to step toward her, his fists clenched, and she flapped forward to meet him. 

“No. But I know she defied you.”

“She!” Daneo’s fist on the table sent the wine goblets ringing. His half-full one clattered to the floor, washing a plume of red down the white wall of the tent.

Despite my sister’s misery, I wanted to laugh. Here was harmony. Here was the sanctuary for all Cruximkind. But the twitch at the corner of Daneo’s eye told me something. For the first time, I felt the echo of his thoughts in my head.
“I loved her.”

So it was jealousy
, I thought to myself.
He loved my mother, and she chose another over him.

“
Not another. Celibacy
.
”
Skylar’s thoughts were barely a whisper.
“Daneo was your mother’s betrothed before she swore herself to the Sibylim. It was a vow she kept for many, many centuries. But when she ... when she broke it ...”
She trailed off. “
Under Cruxim lore, he has every right to hate her for that dishonor.
”

“And to hate me by proxy?” Despite myself, I had spoken aloud. “And my sister, does he love her or hate her? I cannot tell from their bickering. Perhaps he does not know that himself.”

Daneo swung his head toward me, but I focused on the shaking of his fist, fast against his side. It was all he could do not to strike out, I saw, and I sneered my disgust.

“I must speak with Rosario and Xanthos,” he muttered. The wind of his wings sucked angrily at the silk as he exited.

“Quiet!” Skylar commanded as soon as he had gone. “Do you wish to make enemies?”

“Something tells me I already have.”
I was toying with her, letting her seek out my thoughts, but I did not care. I was trussed like a bird in a silken cage, and she was the snake that constricted me.

“Provoke him no more. He loved your mother once,” Skylar confirmed. “He is mated to your sister now. He sits as a Proxim for Silvenhall on the Council of Paleon, which will determine your fate. You would do well to try to charm him.”

I scoffed
. “Charm is not one of my better qualities, nor his.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her eyes. “You undersell yourself.”

“Unlike him, you charmed some,” Kisana said, her head cocked as if listening to my thoughts. “Very much.” She glanced at Skylar.

A vision of Sabine aflame in a tent, and of Joslyn, defiled and crying in the firelight, flashed through my mind.

“Then it was not the lucky kind of charm,” I answered.

Kisana put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “I am sorry, brother, for our arguments and for your pain. Silvenhall has not welcomed you.” She hung her head, embarrassed. “But I am glad you are here and that you are safe.”

For the first time since we had entered Silvenhall, I felt the same. Here, at least, was an ally: one who shared my blood, if not my mission. 

“W
here did you go,” my sister asked me, “when our mother died?”

Skylar had left us alone to talk, and my sister sat beside me, her feet curled beneath her, one hand absentmindedly stroking a cushion.

“Here and there,” I answered—the truth, although evasive.

The hazel eyes looked heavenward, and I knew she wanted more. She too was a missing piece—the daughter of a mother she had never known. Why should I deny her what little I knew?

I sighed, and jostled a smile out of her with my shoulder. “I remember your birth,” I began. “I remember your father, although nothing of my own. I was young, a small child, but I remember the warmth of her. Before your father came, I had her to myself.”

She smiled again at that, though I could tell it pained her. It pained me too. In truth, there was so little I remembered, except for her smell, her warmth, and the kindness of her eyes. I was unsure whether the fragments of Cruxim lore she had told me were even true. Perhaps there was no danger in mortal blood or in having children. But then, she was gone, and Kisana was here in front of me. I made a mental note to ask my sister when I had finished reminiscing.

“Spain, Italy, France, the Balkans—like minstrels, we went everywhere then, she and I,” I continued. “Sometimes, I fantasized that she was hiding me, as if I were the King’s son ... we traveled so much.” I cleared my throat, remembering. “Your father arrived suddenly one day...” I put my hand on her arm. “Forgive me, sister. I was not fond of him. Mother bent to him, like a willow to the wind. Before he arrived, she kept no secrets from me ... so I thought. After ... she kept herself from me.”

I looked at my sister’s face, so like mine but more feminine. It was not the face of Jiordano. I remembered how he had always sneered at me. He hated me, I realized, like most Cruxim in Silvenhall.

“She rarely talked of Cruxim. They let me believe we were solitary creatures.” I was silent for a moment. “She lied to me, Kisana. She never told me about Silvenhall. I remember hearing them whisper together, she and your father. I was very young, and she was with child at the time, her belly full with you. Once, when we ran foul of a coven that nearly bested them, she begged Jiordano to take us both when she died, but he was stony. Once you were born ... well ... he told me later that it was not our way. We were beings of loneliness, he said. It was not in our nature to be around others of our kind.”

“You believed him?” Kisana’s voice was soft with pity.

“I was young. Alone. I had no one else to ask.” I wet my dry lips with my tongue, remembering how I had hated Kisana at her birth. How much like a cuckoo she had seemed. “One night, a little after you were born, I left.”

“For where?”

I shrugged. “I nested with owls in the roofs by day or curled up somewhere in the eaves. I was not strong enough to hunt Vampires at first. I dined on whatever I could catch—rodents mostly, or pigeons. It made me weak. One day, when I had just begun to fledge properly for the first time, I came across one of them in an alleyway. He was injured, torn to shreds by something, another Vampire I presumed at the time, but now...”

“What was it?” She sat forward, intrigued.

“A Sphinx.”

“A Sphinx!” She curled a lock of her hair around her fingers like a child, her eyes shining. “They do exist, then? For so many centuries the Proxim have sought out a Sphinx. Many Cruxim have come to think them a fairytale, except that the
Cruximus
mentions them.”

“Yes.” I paused, my thoughts on Sabine, on her gentleness and strength, the power in her great paws and the kindness in her eyes. “They are the only other beings that sometimes have the strength to repel them.”

“What about Harpies?” Kisana listened with her head tilted, her knees drawn up to her chest.

“What about them?”

“I have heard they can kill Vampires too.”

“Harpies?” I considered it.

She nodded.

“I have never encountered one. I took them to be figments of the imagination.” I laughed. “Then again, I had never thought to meet a Sphinx.”

“Nor I. But I have heard of Harpies nevertheless, and Sphinxes.”

“I hear a lot of things,” I replied. “But so few are true. This
Cruximus
, tell me, sister, can you bring a copy? There is something in there, a riddle about a Sphinx. It is why Skylar brought me here.”

Kisana smoothed down the fabric of her skirt. “Perhaps it is not the only reason,” she said coyly. “But I cannot bring it for you, brother. There is no copy. Only one
Cruximus
exists—the Holy Book kept by the Sibylim in Cascadia and brought out for the Council, when interpretation of its lore might be required. Even then, only the Speaker or the Sibylim may read it. All else learn it as children from the Sibylim themselves, when we make our initiation in the ice caverns beneath Cathedral Cascade.”

Kisana stood, took two goblets from a chest and filled them with wine.

“Then tell it to me,” I urged.

My sister sighed and looked down at the wine as it flowed into the vessels. “It makes no sense to anyone, and I was a young girl then. I have long forgotten it, brother. Perhaps the Speaker can help you, if the Council lets you stay.”

Kisana took one of the goblets and passed it out through one corner of the tent, to where the silhouette of a Cruxim—the guard, Avrel—paced. He took it, muttering his thanks.

The other she brought to me and held to my lips.

I coughed. The liquid tasted sweeter than wild honey and was as thick as blood. I had been expecting merlot.

“What is it?”

“Haemil.” She sat herself down next to me on the cushions and took a sip from the same goblet. “Our loyalty to the Crèche is bound in blood—the blood of our mothers and fathers and ancestors. On Holy days, all but the Sibylim bloodlet. Our own blood, mixed with goats’ blood and honey, can sustain us for a time.” She lowered her voice and looked sidelong at me, gauging my reaction. “It can even negate the need to hunt. Most Crèches have their own supply for the young, or for times when our armies are in training. In Silvenhall, we keep a supply for the Sibylim, who do not hunt.”

“More, please, Kisana.”

She held the goblet to my mouth again.

It was filling, but how I wanted a Vampire on which to slake my thirst. How I wanted Beltran’s neck against my fangs, rather than this Cruxim blood. I washed away the sour taste of vengeance denied with another sweet sip of Haemil. It made me shiver, but I felt some of my strength returning with it. The blood warmed my arms, and I felt a little of my exhaustion fade.

Kisana set the goblet down. “Peace, Amedeo.” Her tone was wistful, as if she knew my thoughts, and perhaps she did. “You should rest. There will come a day to smite them, a day that is coming soon.”

“Not soon enough.” My hands, still knotted behind my back, clenched with the need to kill. “It is nothing, sister. I am just tired and a little cold. My fingers are numb.” I wiggled them behind my back and she leaned close to see.

“The binds are tight,” I said, wincing for effect. “My circulation is suffering.”

Kisana glanced around for the guard, who was still distracted with the goblet of Haemil. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I cannot remove them for you, Ame, it would be a crime, but perhaps I might loosen them just a little.”

She moved behind me, and I clenched my fists as she tugged at the buckles. When I heard the faint grate of metal as the buckles slid from their notch, I flexed my biceps and clenched again, leaping to my feet.

“Amedeo!” she whispered in panic as the silver buckles, only half-tightened, failed. I drew my arms up above my head, wrenching my wrists apart and flapping my wings until my leather bonds split and fell away. Freedom rushed with the blood back into my arms, and I immediately bent to tear at the straps that held my feet.

My sister watched me sadly, but she made no move to alert the guard, nor did she follow me as I slid out of the other corner of the tent, seeking the safety of the skies.