Last Vamp Standing (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Elders killed: total unknown, dangerously high.

Mawares controlled: total unknown, catastrophic level reached.”

W
ATCHER
A
RCHIVE, FINAL REPORT ON
S
AVAGE

T
HE LAST THING
Ariana remembered was being filled with inexorable amounts of light and love. She’d reached toward heaven as Dante had crumbled over her. He’d been inside her, consuming her with his shaft and his fangs. His body had draped around her, enveloping her inside and out as he’d cradled her tightly against him.

Now, as she stared at a rolling landscape of blank, fuzzy whiteness, Ariana experienced heaven again—firsthand.

Miles upon miles of creamy white mountains stretched out as far as her eyes could see, rolling on and on for eternity. Cool mist danced over water that flowed like milk across white-flowered fields. And she wore the clothes she’d been wearing last: her favorite little black dress.

The Ever After.

“What the hell?” She planted her hands on her hips and tried to remember if she’d passed over of her own accord.

She hadn’t thought so.

As the veil between the world below and the Ever After faded, elders could pass through to the other side as often as they liked. But she had to fast for days and meditate like a mad-woman to get there. What she and Dante did in the bathtub was far from fasting . . . or meditating.

“Can you think about something else?” a sweet voice asked from behind her. “I can’t help but read your thoughts while we’re here, and you’re making me blush.”

Spinning around, Ariana set her gaze upon Eve—the mundane with the oldest soul. The one responsible for assisting elders on the other side. Ruan’s mate. Her golden hair was pulled back into a bun that sat on the top of her head, and her ruby red gown was oriental-styled, covering her body from the peeps of her toes to the petite round of her chin. Made Ariana feel out of place in her Goth-wear.

“What are you doing here?” Ariana asked, looking around for the elder Eve should have been leading to the other side. There was no one in sight. Only snow-flocked trees and blank canvas skies.

“I’m doing my job.” She blinked innocently. “I’m supposed to show you to your permanent residence on this side in case you don’t make it.”

“My perma—no, no, no.” Ariana felt the color drain from her face. “I knew I didn’t pass over on my own.”
Dante. Their lovemaking. The tingly sensation on her neck.
It all flooded back. “Oh my God, he pulled too much . . .”

She put her fingers to her neck and felt where Dante’s fangs had been. The two holes were warm to the touch, buzzing with the memory of his lips and tongue.

“Yes. He drained you completely.” Eve took Ariana by the hand and led her to a wrought iron bench beside them. It seemed to appear out of nowhere; a hovering silver frame in the endless mist. “But it’s not as bad as it seems. He’s going to try to save you with his blood. He’s going to try to fill you back up.”

Drinking from her vein and taking too much blood was an issue that could be solved. She’d be weak, immobile, need an Alvambra drip ASAP and have to sleep off the massive headache that’d follow. But if Dante drained her dry, that was another beast entirely.

Ariana plopped down, resting her head on her hands. “This can’t be happening.”

“His love for you is strong and pure, Ariana. It’s enough to bring you through this if you let him.”

Ariana’s gaze shot to Eve’s. “What do you mean, if I let him?”

“He has done all he can do. Now the decision is yours to make. You’re in the first stages of the Valcdana and will learn much before it is time to go back.”

Valcdana was the vampires’ oldest and most revered mating ceremony. Reserved for couples who want to pay the ultimate price, their blood and their life, for an eternity with their partner. In most instances though, the Valcdana led to death.

“Yes, Ariana,” Eve said, reading her thoughts. “But to every yin in this world, there is a yang. Where the Valcdana is blackened by the possibility of death, the enlightenment that you are about to undertake sheds new light.”

“If we make it that far.” Ariana’s stomach tightened. “I’ve only known a handful of vamps who were strong enough to bring their partners through the rite.”

“You think it’s chance that some men drain their women and are unable to bring them back?” Eve shook her head, releasing a few blonde tendrils from her bun. “It has nothing to do with chance, or even the strength of the men. It has everything to do with
why
the ceremony was started in the first place.”

Ariana never cared much for the details of the Valcdana. Had never really cared to know much about anything related to being bound to another person for all eternity. Now, as she tried to grasp the details, they were sketchy and unclear. “The Valcdana begins during mating. It’s not difficult to understand the
why
of it. Bloodlust takes over everything.”

“It’s more than that. If a man takes the vein of his partner, draining her out of pure lust or because he hungered for the passion of her body rather than the passion of her heart, the woman passes to the Ever After and remains here. If a man drains his partner out of love—pure, brilliant love with the intent of being bound together as
one
—the Valcdana can be completed as it was designed. The woman is brought back to her lover’s arms.”

That dug up a whole heap of problems. Dante had issues dealing with his hunger from the first day she met him, though Ariana didn’t realize he’d hungered for her soul then. He could barely restrain his urges long enough to be in the room with her for an hour, let alone a lifetime.

From the passion behind his kiss, the way it lit a fire in her core and seemed to enflame one in his, how could Ariana tell if he drained her because he lost control or because the depth of his love catapulted them into Valcdana territory?

“Come,” Eve said, standing. She really was regal in this place and moved with effortless grace. Like she didn’t walk but glided over the mist-soaked ground. “Would you walk with me, Ariana? I’m supposed to tell you more before he gives you his vein.”

Ariana followed Eve down a narrow winding trail that led to a fountain. A massive stone angel perched in the center, her legs crossed as she dipped a dainty toe into the water.

“I know all about the voices that plague Dante and the crosses in his blood line. But you have to trust that his love for you is pure. If you do that, you can focus on what you have come here to learn.”

Ariana nodded slowly as her heart stilled. She trusted Dante more than anyone she’d ever met. She trusted him with her life. Her heart.

“Don’t you want to be at his side for all eternity?”

There was nowhere else she’d rather be than at his side. More now than ever before.

“Then you must know what you do for him. What you do to him.” Eve picked up a pebble and stroked its flat, gray surface. “You are a healer, Ariana. You always have been. You believe you pull from Black Moon, that Black Moon’s healing energies are the source of your powers. You believe you are just another insignificant pebble in Black Moon’s sparkling pool.” She flicked the pebble in her hand into the fountain. It falling-leafed its way to the bottom as ripples spread through the water and washed against the angel’s toe. “You couldn’t be more wrong. Your energy, your healing and your light feed into Black Moon.”

A breeze swept across her arms, reminding her of the brand her haven had left behind. Rolling her lace gloves down to her wrist, Ariana stroked the raised lines of the crescent. “I’ve felt anchored to the place since the first time I projected from there. Black Moon is a part of me as much as I’m a part of it.”

Ariana’s gaze flittered to the ripples of water as they reached the far end of the fountain and echoed back again.

“Your healing energy has brushed upon every elder you’ve astral-projected to the haven. You’ve made them healthier and more whole. You’ve eased their doubts and confirmed their dreams and beliefs. From that single projection, you healed their every wound and forgave every piece of baggage that they carried through their transition.”

Ariana braced herself on the edge of the fountain. No wonder the elders treated her with such awe-inspired reverence. How could she have known she was influencing them in such a way? Everything she’d ever known was flipping topsy-turvy.

“Dante was right,” she thought aloud, skimming her fingers over the branded sword on her arm. “Only I’ve dusted onto them, instead of them onto me.”

“You would have realized it sooner, but you didn’t want to open your eyes and see. There are other things, too. Other things you’ve been blind to.”

Interest piquing, Ariana took her gaze off the angel, who seemed to be staring right at her, and leveled it on Eve.

“What else.” It was a statement. A demand. If this was her enlightenment, then damn it, she wanted to hear everything.

Eve smiled, like she’d been waiting for the enthusiasm all along. “Without you, Black Moon wouldn’t have a barrier at all. You
are
the barrier, the healing force behind its walls keeping it hidden.”

A twinge of denial pricked Ariana’s side. “You don’t know a thing about Black Moon. You’ve only been here two days. How would you know what keeps it hidden?”

Eve’s sweet smile remained fixed, irritating Ariana all the more. “It’s my job to bring elders to this side. It’s my job to know the workings of the place where the majority of them are hidden. But it wasn’t until it was revealed that I would take part in your enlightenment that most of this was brought to light . . . pardon the pun.”

Sounded honest enough, and Eve had no real reason to pull Ariana’s chain about something this serious.

“How is it possible?” Ariana’s wind punched out of her sails. “How can I do anything to keep Black Moon safe? Fleshing out the elders’ mawares inside the haven walls is the only thing we’ve found that can do that.”

“No.” Impatience flared in Eve’s blue eyes. “That’s what your Primus told you, what he wanted you to believe.”

Eve picked up another pebble and handed it to Ariana. She took it and turned it over, then dropped it into the water. The pebble smacked the surface with a heavy kerplunk and sank right to the bottom. Ripples spread hard and fast, sloshing against the angel’s foot.

Ariana traced the logic from Eve’s words back to the first talk she’d had with her Primus about astral-projecting. He’d said she needed to use her maware to bring newly transitioned elders to Black Moon. That it was the only way to keep the haven safe—the only way to keep
him
safe, too.

But what if their safety didn’t depend on the elders at all?

“If my healing energy dusted onto the elders when I projected them to Black Moon,” she said, piecing together the puzzle, “then each time I project, it’s reinforcing the walls. It doesn’t have anything to do with the elders fleshing out their mawares.”

Eve smiled and leaned over into the fountain, her red dress flaring out over the stone rim like a lake of fire. “Now you’re getting it.”

“Damn it, he could’ve just told me,” Ariana said as anger flushed her cheeks. “I risked getting staked every time I teleported into the black market to bring back an elder. If it was only my projecting that reinforced the barrier, I could’ve projected to a thousand places in the forest without the damned risk!”

“But that wouldn’t have helped your Primus in the least,” Eve said, pointing into the sparkling crystal waters of the fountain. “Look and enlighten yourself completely.”

Ariana leaned over the side and peered deep into the water, past the flat stone bottom to an image that slowly surfaced. An image she’d seen before.

The center ring in the black market.

Thick swags of fabric dropped from the ceiling onto the raised stage. Velvet chairs lined the ring auditorium-style with a blacked-out elevated section for regular high bidders. Curling upward to the left was a spiral staircase that led to Juan Carlos’s private quarters.

Seeing the stage in the market once more, even as an enchanted image from the safety of the Ever After, didn’t sit well with Ariana. She cringed remembering how Juan Carlos had caught her downstairs—she’d just projected and had been too disoriented to get up to speed with what had been going down—and how he’d demanded that she give her name to the screaming bidders.

But it was also where she’d set her sights on Dante for the first time. He’d stood
right there
near the bumper, blocking the stage from the seats. He’d captured her with a single smoldering glance, a look that had shimmered with sincerity and weakness despite the strength radiating off him in hot, heady waves.

The image in the water came to life, rippling with sound and movement, air and life. Ariana let herself be swept away into the current, carried into the revelation.

“Make it fast,” a gravelly voice boomed from somewhere above the stage. “Doors open in less than an hour.”

It sounded like Juan Carlos, all the business savvy of a snake. Her blood chilled at the husk of his voice. She remembered with too much clarity the impact he’d had on her and the resulting sting on her cheek.

“Whatever arrangement we had before, it’s over. We’re through.” It was Ariana’s Primus. She could make out the condescending baritone anywhere.

“I told your messenger the same thing I’m telling you. Breaking our commitment isn’t that simple. We have a deal.”

“
Had
a deal,” her Primus corrected.

“Is that why you finally came out of the safety of your Black Moon cocoon? To pound it through my skull? Well, you can forget it. You’re not scaring me any more than your guppy did.” Papers rustled. A door closed. “I get the message you want out, but it’s not happening.”

“You broke the agreement.”

“I didn’t break shit,” Juan Carlos hissed. “My therian guards said three escaped from the rooms downstairs. You got two elders
and
a piggyback. Count yourself lucky I let three leave, and shut your trap.”

“Your guards are imbeciles. The two elders who came back to Black Moon don’t count as part of our arrangement. One was Ariana, the elder who’s supposed to bring your elders back to my haven, the other was a damned Watcher, and one was an elder who didn’t belong here. They brought that one with them.”