Darkness Falls (33 page)

“So, you’re okay with this?”

That rusty chuckle came from between his lips once again and she relaxed back into the chair with a smile on her lips. They were silent for a few minutes, absurdly comfortable in one another’s company. She wasn’t too surprised since he had changed the course of her life when she was sixteen and she hadn’t even known it. It still plagued her how things could have been different if he had let her keep her memories. In the end, she had to begrudgingly admit that he had done the right thing by concealing them.

A sudden gruff sound came from the back of his throat and jolted her out of her reverie. Turning her head, she looked at him in curiosity. A grin played at his mouth and laughter danced in his haunted eyes as he said, “He didn’t want the two of us to be left alone in the same room because he is under the delusion you might prefer me over him.”

Her lips parted and she stared at him for a moment as the meaning of his words sank in. A giggle bubbled up from her belly and exploded outwards because Feryn was apparently unaware of the messed up connection between her and Varick. Still clutching his hand, she covered her mouth with her other hand to try and contain her mirth. “So he wasn’t truly worried about you going all psycho on me at all, was he?”

Grinning mischievously, Varick shook his head no, which only made her laugh harder. As difficult as it was to imagine, maybe he wasn’t angry, maybe he was jealous. She had to know and with a small smile, she asked, “He’s jealous?”

“As a fucking bear.”

“And you didn’t do anything to assure him that there is absolutely nothing between us?” she asked, feeling ridiculously happy that Feryn was jealous. “That there could never be anything between us?”

He shook his head no, a hint of the old Varick shining through the cracks in his broken exterior. “He watches you all of the time and it gives me some pleasure to tweak his pride, even if it is all I have.”

“Oh, Varick,” she said on a sigh, her laughter dying just as abruptly as it had begun. Twisting in her chair, she reached up and cupped his slender cheek in her palm, nearly crying as he closed his eyes as if in pain. After a moment, he pressed his skin against hers and seemed to take comfort in her touch. “Don’t you realize that you have so much more?”

He opened his eyes, letting her see the hollowness that swallowed the green depths. “She took everything from me, Malorie. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

What could she possibly say to that to make it better? Brushing her thumb over his sharp cheekbone, she brought the hand she held up to her lips and kissed the bony knuckles. “We’ll make it all right, Varick, even if it means hunting the bitch down wherever she is and killing her ourselves.”

“Father has bound her and put her in the dungeon.” A wry smile curved his lips as he shook his head. “Besides, I no longer have the strength to kill her.”

“You came awfully close back there in the caves,” she teased, hoping to lighten the burden he carried. She wouldn’t tell him that if he wished it, she would kill Taella for him. At his slight nod, she added, “What if you drank some of my bloo….”

He stopped her before she could finish the offer, putting his finger over her lips and frantically shaking his head no. “I never should have drunk your blood after you rescued me but I was out of my mind with confusion and rage. I thought you were another illusion crafted out of my own fevered dreams. You have no idea how often I imagined you saving me, Malorie. I envisioned it so many times: grabbing you and draining you of your blood and then ripping Taella’s head from her fucking body. It wasn’t that I had anything against you but I really, really wanted her to die.”

In spite of his words, Malorie chuckled as she leaned back in the chair and relaxed once more. “You would have had to drink a lot more blood if you wanted to drain me dry.”

A soft chuckle eased past his lips as he leaned back, too, and muttered, “Well, thank the gods for that. I’m pretty sure my father would have killed me if I had managed to kill you.”

She snorted, “He might have thanked you for getting rid of the thorn in his side, no matter how jealous or possessive he might act.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he agreed. His expression was dead serious but his lips trembled as he fought his smile and she grinned at him. On a sigh, he murmured, “I wish I would have kept you when we first met. I think we would have had so much fun together and I wouldn’t have gotten drawn deeper and deeper into Taella’s world.”

“Yes and as a sixteen year old child I would have been overwhelmed by your world and, worse, your father would have had no need for me at all,” she returned, rolling her eyes as she continued to smile. “I would have been kept in isolation as I popped out Aradian baby after Aradian baby until I was merely a mindless body. We never would have been given the chance to become friends.”

He cringed at the future that would have been, knowing she spoke the truth. “Okay, then I guess that this way worked out better.”

“It would have been better had your father killed all of the vampires when he thought you had been killed instead of just vampires that killed humans.”

Varick’s eyes widened as he stared at Malorie in awe. Swallowing thickly, he asked, “He did that?”

“He did,” she assured him. “He would have killed all of them but he wanted to honor your memory and what Taella had established with her ‘
human-friendly
’ vampires.”

“Yeah,” he growled. “She was a real saint. The fucking bitch.”

“She had all of them fooled.”

“And none more so than me,” he lamented in self-loathing.

“Sweetheart,” Malorie said, grabbing his face between her palms and forcing him to meet her eyes. “She was very good at what she did, Varick. Hell, she fooled your father and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that your father does not suffer fools easily.”

Slowly, almost grudgingly, he nodded his head. In the deepest, darkest depths of his eyes, she saw the first spark of hope and she almost smiled. Speaking in a soft, broken voice, he croaked, “I lived with her and her vampires for years and I never suspected a thing. How could I have been so blind?”

“Because you’re a good man,” she told him with unreserved conviction. “When you’re good, you cannot fathom such evil, such depravity and duplicitousness. You expect others to be as honest as you are and take them at their word.”

“But you saw it.”

She smiled slightly and winked at him, “I’m not that good.”

Varick snorted, “You’re nowhere as evil as Taella.”

“Maybe not but I was trained to kill vampires,” she reminded him. “I will never trust a vampire or those that create them because it is too ingrained within me to hate them.”

“Your father was a wise man.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her stomach rumbling with unease at the thought of her father. Pressing a hand against her gut, she leaned back in her chair and nodded towards the festivities, eager to talk about something other than Gustav Hunter. “Well, are you at least enjoying yourself at this party?”

With a grimace, he shook his head no. “I used to love these revelries, gorging myself on beautiful women, on the blood and bodies of beautiful women. But now, the thought of anyone touching me like that makes me physically ill. What if I never want to fuck again?”

“You have to give yourself time to heal,” she said softly, wishing she had thought of a different topic instead of yet another that brought back the hellish years he spent in captivity. She wasn’t going to treat him as if he were diseased and she crossed her fingers in the hope that she didn’t say or do anything that made it worse. As long as she avoided the topics of her dad or her ex-husband or Feryn she’d be able to pretend everything was okay in her world, at least for a little while.

“My father wants me to get involved in the new Breeder program, even though that would mean working with you,” he said softly, almost as an after-thought. Malorie immediately sat a little straighter to hear every little tidbit he might divulge, silently pleased that Feryn was letting her work on the Breeder program even though he hadn’t told her anything yet. “I think he hopes a female will be born and in twenty years she will choose me.”

“Um, maybe you need to tell him that
that
will never happen,” Malorie told him.

He looked at her with a slight smile, “But then he’ll know about our relationship and that will spoil all of my fun.”

His words repeated in her head and she frowned, “He’s going to let the female babies choose their own fate?”

“More or less,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, obviously she’ll have to choose an Aradian but there are thousands of males out there so surely one of them will be acceptable?”

“Hmm,” Malorie murmured, contemplating this new information. It wasn’t absolute freedom but it was a concession of sorts, and it was a huge concession for Feryn to make. There were going to be a lot of furious Aradians out there when they learned the few females were going to be masters of their own limited fates. “And the males? Will they have some say in their fates?”

“I don’t know, maybe.” He looked at her and a wicked grin curled his lips and lit his eyes, “If not, you’ll probably just release them back into the wild anyways.”

As her jaw dropped, he threw his head back and laughed, a rusty sound that was absolutely beautiful. Shaking her head, she tried not to smile as she smirked, “That was not funny, Varick.”

“Yes it was. Um, do you want to meet the mothers?” Varick asked with unexpected excitement in his voice. He sat up and looked at her as if leaving the orgy to meet a couple of pregnant women was suddenly the most important thing in the world. When Malorie simply blinked at him because she was still trying to process his words, his expression fell and his shoulders slumped, “I mean, you don’t have to….”

“I’d love to,” she said quickly, jumping to her feet and pulling Varick to his. His answering smile convinced her she made the right decision, even if the thought of meeting the hordes of women who had been forced upon her father was abhorrent to her. “Anything is better than staying here and accidentally stumbling upon some bimbo hitting on Feryn….”

“He’d shoot her down before she got within ten feet.” Taking her hand, he led her away from the festivities and further into the darkness between the buildings.

Malorie looked at him with a grimace, letting him take the lead since she had no idea where the women were being kept. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“Yeah and the fact that he’s done it to at least a dozen beautiful women in the time since you joined me,” he said, a slight smile playing at his lips as he kept his eyes focused on the route he was taking.

“You’re making that up,” she said, scowling at him for being so cruel. In the dark, Malorie had no idea where they were. She just knew that the sounds of carnal drums were fading and the warm air was filled with the scent of the ocean and not sex. “I mean, I didn’t see him at all.”

“There is a different bond between an Aradian and his child and an Aradian and the woman he loves,” Varick told her, glancing at her briefly before continuing. “There is a telepathic bond between me and my father, Malorie. I can see what he sees, and to a certain extent, feel what he feels.”

Malorie’s eyes shot to his in horror at the implications of his admission, “Please tell me that you stay out of his head when he’s intimate with a woman.”

“That’s hardly an issue since he hasn’t been with anyone since we’ve returned,” Varick said with a chuckle. “But you don’t have to worry. I put a mental barrier up when things get to a certain point, usually well before intercourse occurs, because he’s my dad and… yuck.”

Malorie let out a horrified laugh at that. Licking her lips, she felt the question that was plaguing her boiling up within her and before she could stop herself, she blurted, “He hasn’t been with anyone else but has he, um, been excited by anyone else?”

Laughing out loud, Varick wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his thin body. She half-expected him to rub his knuckles against the top of her head but he just held her against him. She was able to feel his ribs through the thin layer of clothing that he wore. It hurt to feel the evidence of his captivity but she refused to say anything, not when he was laughing.

“Just you, my friend,” he assured her, turning another corner and coming upon the warmly lit glow of a small mansion that was well away from the festivities. “And that’s pretty much a continuous problem for him, which just fuels his anger and frustration.”

“At least I’m not the only one suffering,” she grumbled, as they slowed their steps and she finally took in the beautiful exterior. Lazily sprawled across the grounds, at least three stories tall and a hundred feet wide, the mansion was white with pillars and tons of windows. If it was smaller, it would have looked like a cottage in a romantic fairy tale, with climbing ivy and sparkling fairy lights and a massive yard with plenty of trees for scaling or setting up a hammock.

“We’re not on the same island, are we?” she said dumbly, wondering how she knew they had moved but not understanding why she wasn’t sick. Looking up at Varick, she saw his amusement as he shook his head no. “How?”

“There are corridors between the islands that we use,” he explained, though it wasn’t a helpful explanation. At her bewildered look, he continued, “Because the islands are close together, it was simply easier to create… shortcuts.”

“Like Netherspace?”

“Hmm,” he hemmed, screwing up his face in thought. “The short cuts are more stable but, yes, they’re similar to Netherspace, only they are permanent corridors. Not all Aradians are aware of their existence and only a few know of all of them, so it’s a huge honor that I’m showing you this one.”

She smirked, “Because I have just so many people I could tell.”

“You never know,” he grimaced as a dark expression flitted across his face. Taking her hand, he pulled her forward but she held back. When he looked at her, he arched an eyebrow in silent question.

Staring at the house, she softly asked, “Are there hundreds of women in there?”