Final Days (13 page)

She was so grateful for this man who brought love to her before it was too late.  Only she wasn’t sure how to make him understand that he couldn’t stay.  Unless she told him
the truth.  Something inside her still would not let her do it.  Not yet, not while they were having the best time of their lives falling in love.

She admitted it.  Not only had she fallen completely for him, but she knew he had fallen for her.  Love was a big word and a big concept, but all she needed to know was how she felt when she was with him.  Earlier tonight she’d thought that he was breaking her heart, and that was true.
 

God, she didn’t want to tell him that this love they’d begun was ill-fated.  And yet, she knew now that neither one of them would have missed it for the world. 

She smiled and touched his chest near his heart, then laid her ear against him to listen to its beautiful cadence.  Life was so special.  Why didn’t everyone realize how precious?  Even she hadn’t paid enough attention through the years. 

Getting up carefully so she didn’t disturb him, she grabbed her satin robe and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.  As she walked out of the hallway, the glow of dawn peeked into the span of windows and French doors that covered the back of her apartment. 

Morning.  She’d missed it yesterday with all the eating and sex.  What a different woman she’d become in the wake of her illness.  Alisa loved who she was now. 

Th
e young woman taught caution and detachment by her mother was finally open and loving.  She didn’t blame her, it was all her mother ever knew.  She was just so grateful the illness and Koen had changed her course.

Hmm. 
Grateful to the illness?
  It
had
been the catalyst.  Wow.  Perhaps there really was order and purpose to the events in our lives.  Perhaps fate and destiny did exist.

The sun threw its brilliant light all around the edge of the city, the pinks disappearing as it continued its journey upward.  Alisa drew
in the fresh morning air and decided that chocolate chip ice cream would go perfect with this crisp morning.  And then maybe she would sneak away to find Percy and explain.  She smiled as she covered her eyes with a hand.  Like he didn’t know
exactly
what was going on. 

She’d be back in plenty of time to kiss Koen awake.  Walking carefully to the kitchen, she quietly filled a small bowl with the smooth co
ld ice cream and went back out to watch the sun illuminate Chicago, the last city she would see before she left forever.  Because she would come home when the time came, to the Windy City.  And to Percy, who had been with her since that first day so long ago when she’d insisted he hire her.  Neither one of them had been sorry. 

Although Alisa knew she should rest along with Koen because she would be up all night with him, she wanted to go into the office for just a little while.  There was an article she wanted to write and it had to be now because this was the moment that the words came, and writers learn to listen to those words.  If you didn’t capture the feelings and ideas when they were there, sometimes they were lost forever. 

So she dressed and left a little note attached to the back of the bedroom door so that if Koen woke, he would know where she was.  She thought about the last note she’d left him. 

Ah, baby, this is not the same
, she thought as she looked at him sleeping soundly in her bed.

That huge, sexy man, in
her
bed.   Another image she would never forget.

FOURTEEN

Starla couldn’t move.  There on that stone slab, she knew with certainly this woman was going to kill her. 

And that she would succeed.  She was frozen as she had been a few times before by first blood magic.  Tears slipped from her eyes.  
Well, look at that
, she thought. 
I can’t move a muscle, but my heart sent the tears anyway, and my body let them come.

When she’d first felt the complete control of a first blood in Paris, she could never have imagined it would be the last thing she experienced before she died.  All those ideas, the years she and her friend Henri spoke about when they first realized they were immortal, all just smoke now.

A sob seeped out.  Oh, God, she wouldn’t be able to meet Henri at the base of the Pyramid for their 100 year anniversary. 
And Jacob.
  How he would grieve.  She wasn’t sure he would ever get over her loss, because she knew if she had lost
him
, all that made her life worthwhile would be gone.

But mostly, she wanted to apologize to her children. They would never be born now.  A tragedy so great
, she thought the world would grieve.  If Mother Earth were mother to all children of the moon as Ahmose believed her to be, she would weep the most.

Ahmose.  That man had been through so many centuries waiting for her to come to bring these three beautiful souls to life.

That this vicious woman could steal all that…that she could prevail through all the power of the good and noble people in her new family…the universe had failed her and her children.  God, or whatever designed all this, had failed.

Windari looked at her work, the woman she needed to remove from existence already on her prepared alter
awaiting that final slice.  She would be quick, she was not a brutal woman.  But she would not hesitate to do what had to be done.

Look at her
, she thought.  Tears. It was understandable.  But life was brief for humans, and essentially, that was what she really was.  Even with first blood in Starla, altered to simulate Windari’s race, she was still little more than human.  The young vampire would really only lose a few decades.

No reason to draw this out.  Put the little thing out of her misery.  Windari stepped up to the alter and hovered over Starla.

“Sorry, pretty one.  You’re just in the wrong place and with the wrong man.  I know you’re mated to Jacob, not Ahmose, but he will never look at me if you are there.  You’ve bewitched him, somehow.  Must be some Shoazan magic.  I promise, this will be quick.  May you journey easily into the stars.”

Taking the knife with Crystal’s aura embedded, she cut across
Starla’s throat, deep, very deep, deeper than any vampire could survive.  She severed the arteries, muscles, and nerves, and snapped the bone that supported her skull.  She watched as the lifeforce faded from the girl.  Sad.  Well, death happened every day. 

Taking the knife, she tucked it into the edge of a crevice in the cavern wall, sighed, and walk
ed out of the cave.  After she cleared the opening, Windari looked up at the stars.  She wished she hadn’t had to do that.  Heaven forgive her.

Starla felt the slice, deep and ruinous, as it cut into her tender skin and slid across arteries she knew could not
heal.  She had only a moment to know that her life was over and her son would never be born.  Tears escaped and rolled down frozen cheeks.  Grief like no one could ever know surged forth, and then Starla lost consciousness.  Somehow, she believed she should have been able to protect her child.  But sweet oblivion ended the thought and the two lives on the stone slab were gone.

Ahmose moved quietly beside Jacob as they traveled to join the team outside the village.   He heard Jacob groan out loud
and saw him fall to his knees.

“God, no…”

Ahmose went down beside him immediately, a sick feeling in his gut.

“What?”

Jacob looked up, his eyes filled with tears.

“I felt her leave.”  He paused.  Then, in words so lost in pain, Ahmose almost didn’t understand them, “I felt her die.”

Ahmose grabbed Jacob’s shoulders to support him, although it was as much to support himself as well.

“It can’t be.  Jacob, you have to be mistaken.”

“She’s gone.  I felt her lifeforce flicker, then it was gone.  She’s a part of me, and I felt her go.”

At that moment a member of
Ahmose’s search team showed up and was surprised to find them on the ground holding each other.

“Um, master, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but we found her cell phone signal,” he informed Ahmose.  “We know where she is.”

“Take us immediately,” Ahmose yelled and pulled Jacob up.  “Is anyone any closer?”

“
No sir.”

“How far away are we?  I can move faster than any of you.”

The young vampire gave him the information.

Ahmose turned to Jacob.

“I have to go to her.”

“Go.  We’ll be right behind.”

Ahmose’s hyper-speed was extremely fast as a first blood, and although he knew Jacob would not be far behind, every second may matter now.  If she was in mortal danger, seconds could make a difference if it wasn’t already too late.  He powered through the trees, down through a copse of dense brush, and through a stand of overgrown trees into a cave barely visible to the naked eye.  His powers of observation were extraordinary and he found the cave right away after entering the area.

Busting th
rough to an interior chamber, he saw a glow of candlelight pulsing against the rock and moved toward it. She was there, bathed softly in the pretty flickering light.  An overwhelming scent of blood assaulted him right away.  He was at her side before any human eye could have seen him move, and he saw the slit on her throat from one side to the next.

Jacob had not been wrong.  She was gone.  He didn’t even need to feel for a heartbeat or pulse.  This near to her, he would feel her lifeforce if it w
as still there.  It wasn’t.

He leaned across the stone to brush her hair from her face and kiss her on the cheek.

“This isn’t real,” he said out loud.  But his eyes reminded him it was.  His beautiful Shoazan.  He grieved for her loss as much as for the son curled inside her.  She had been Jacob’s mate, but she still had been in his heart.  The mother of children only they could have had together.

Noise from his left let him know the others had arrived.  He looked up at Jacob.  The tears in his own eyes told Jacob before he saw his mate lying there, bled out.

Jacob came forward, crawled up on the slab, took her into his arms, and buried his head against her ruby-stained throat.

“You can’t leave me now, my love.  We have only just begun our lives together.”

Several moments later, Jacob looked up at Ahmose.

“There’s nothing you can do?  No
first blood children of the moon thing that can fix this?”

“I cannot create life where
it is no more.  If I could, I would make it so nothing could ever touch her.  I have failed all of you.   My talents are useless here.”

They were all silent. 
What was there to say?

Ahmose was not an empath, but he could feel Jacob’s pain through the air, permeating every molecule of space around them.  It interfered with his own grief, forming now after the moment of disbelief passed and he realized Starla was gone forever and so was his son.  Their pain mixed and twisted through everything.

He couldn’t stop himself.  This odd little family they had been building had meant everything to him.  He crawled up on the slab and put an arm around Jacob, with a hand on Starla’s forehead.  It did not matter that his kinsmen would see their leader cry.  He couldn’t have stopped it anyway.  They sat there entwined, moments un-kept, and held her. 

Eventually, Ahmose laid a hand on Jacob’s bowed head an
d slid down off the stone.

“We have to take her home. 
Them.
  We have to take them home.”

Jacob lifted his head, his eyes still glistening with tears Ahmose knew would not stop for a long time.

“I know,” he said, his voice cracking.  He still didn’t move.  A few minutes later, Ahmose took his arm and gently pulled him off the table, supporting him as he gained his balance.

“Do you want me to carry her?”  Ahmose asked, but he already knew the answer.

“No.  I’ve got her.  I’ve always got her.”

Tears welled again in
Ahmose’s eyes.  He looked over Jacob’s head as his team came back into the cave.  The man who led the team shook his head.  Whoever had done this was gone.

It didn’t matter.  They would find the person and justice would be done.  Death was too kind to punish these
murders, but there really was nothing that was cruel enough.

Jacob lifted
Starla’s body. 
Oh, God
, Ahmose thought.  This beautiful woman was reduced now to the emotionless noun. 
Body
. All the love and vibrant life she’d contained…gone.  Just the body left now.  Behind Jacob, trying to be strong, Ahmose almost lost it.  He covered his face with his hands as he suffocated a wail that wanted to slip out.

Holding her close, supporting her head, Jacob crossed the barrier from the forest into the first blood’s village.  Ahmose followed behind him, his eyes
going over and over to Starla’s long brunette hair curling down Jacob’s arm. He just could not imagine never seeing her again.  God, how he was going to miss her.  Already he felt a huge hole in his life he knew would never be filled.

Vampires lived very long lives.  Loss was common, they grew accustomed to it.  Sorrow and grief had to be expected, but then they had to move on.  Life continued.  That was the greatest truth.  But Ahmose could see only a dark and empty future without his Shoazan and his children.

Jacob slowed as they arrived in the main garden where the community gathered.  A massive bench graced the center surrounded by water fountains and flowers in myriad varieties.

He laid Starla there and dropped beside her.  Ahmose had noticed he hadn’
t let her go since they found her.

“Where do I put her
?” Jacob finally asked.

“Send for Chione,” Ahmose said to one of his men, and squatted down.

“Chione will take care of her. We will…” he couldn’t say the words.  He swallowed and wiped his eyes.  “We will bury her on the hill above my dwelling.  She will lie in the warmth of the sun again.”

Moments later, Chione came into the gardens on her summons.  Her eyes swept the scene and landed on
Starla’s body.

“No,” she whispered, as she moved towards her.  “No.”

She dropped beside Jacob, touched Starla’s chest, her eyes travelling to her throat.

“Who did this?”

Ahmose answered her.  “We do not know.  An ancient dagger was recovered.  Eillia is on her way and hopefully will be able to determine who held it.  Whoever it was is dead, they just don’t know it yet.”

“The child,” Chione murmured.  “He was too new.  He will never be born.”

“No.”  The word cracked, Jacob’s voice low and angry.  “It’s all gone.  My life with her and our children.  It’s all gone.”

Chione leaned against him and touched his forehead.  Her touch should have been able to calm him, her ability to impress another person’s emotions was strong.  But it didn’t work, and she wasn’t surprised.  Even her considerable talents couldn’t override grief of this level.  Her
eyes moved back to her friend lying still forever, surrounded by white moonflowers that glowed in the pastel lights that lit the gardens.  The relationship she and Starla had developed had been close, and more so each time they were together.

Chione thought they would have become soul sisters down the years
, now that Starla would be living with them in the village. 

She kept herself together for these men who loved Starla so much.  And she knew later, when she could, when she was alone in her dwelling, she would break down.  Not now.

“I will prepare everything.  Jacob.  Master.  My sorrow for your loss is deep.  This community will be in mourning for a very long time.  If you would bring her to me in an hour, I will have a place for her in the Temple of the Moon.”

Chione bowed as she stepped away and turned toward
s the temple, free to let the tears flow.  And they did, so steadily they obscured her vision and she had to keep wiping them away.

The next hour went quickly as she did her duty to her master and his queen.