My Soul to Keep (23 page)

“I'm afraid that has everything to do with me.” The voice rolled over her like liquid, terrible in its familiarity even after all these years.

There were some things one never forgot: faces, voices … the man who had given her nightmares for so long, who'd bred fear in her heart from an early age. She'd never forget him. Finding Jonah, he'd been in her head, lurking in the darkest corners. Because, face it, if Jonah was alive, she had wondered if her father could be, too. Now she knew.

Here she was. Here
he
was, his face unchanged. Handsome. All sharp angles. High cheekbones. The brown doe eyes like her own … down to the twisting light at the centers. A horrible beauty, unwanted, reviled. Lethal.

He moved forward with long-legged strides and
grasped both her shoulders. “Sorcha.” He beamed at her as if they were long-lost friends enjoying a reunion. “You look lovely. I hardly recognize you … you look so like your mother when I first met her.” He brushed her hair, fingering her bangs with a light touch. “She once wore her hair like this.”

A shudder of revulsion racked Sorcha. She wanted to look nothing like Danae. Staring into his eyes, she knew it would be useless to deny her identity. Her reaction to him alone only served as confirmation. She shook like a leaf so close to him, gripped in his hands. Feeling like that frightened little girl all over again, she wished only to run.

Air hissed from her lips in barely suppressed loathing as he pressed a kiss to each cheek. She marveled at the warmth of his lips, that a man so cold could feel warm in any way.

Pulling back, he looked at her with delight brimming in his dead eyes. “I should be surprised, I suppose, but I'm not. I never believed it. Never thought I could have lost all of you in the explosion.” He assessed her up and down. “You look well. Strong. Come, don't you have anything to say to your father?”

“Father?” Ingrid blinked, looked between the two of them, her mouth a small dark O against the tips of her blinding-white teeth.

“Yes. Sorcha is my eldest daughter. The others, my daughters, sons, my mate … all are dead.” He said this so unfeelingly that she knew he hadn't cared when he'd learned of their deaths. If he'd suffered remorse at all, it would have been the loss of what they could bring him—not
them
specifically. He'd never loved them. “Maybe the others will turn up yet, hmm.” His eyes gleamed with a faraway light and she recognized the madness there, still running strong. Maybe even stronger. “I do miss your mother,” he murmured, as if reading some of her thoughts. “She was a comfort to me.”

Sorcha felt little sorrow for the mother who had looked right though her, who had only ever been distant, aloof, indifferent to anyone except Ivo. She cared nothing for the children she gave him, nothing except that she made him happy providing him with offspring.

He drew Sorcha to a plush leather couch. “Good work, Ingrid. I take back all those nasty things I said to you when you didn't return with Tresa. We'll still find her, I've no doubt.” He snapped at the waiter tucked in the corner. “Fetch another drink. Sorcha, what will you have?”

“Nothing. I'm fine.”

“Nonsense. Are you hungry?” His lips twisted in a self-deprecating grin. The kind she'd seen politicians use on television. He could be that
way. All smiles one moment, then dangerous snarls the next. “I imagine the fare we provided you with earlier was merely palatable. Well, that's at an end now. What do you like? We have a wonderful pâté. Oysters on the half shell? Didn't you love seafood?” That had been her sister. Sorcha grimaced, remembering her sister flicking shrimp tails in her face and her father laughing.

“Nothing. Thanks.”

He frowned at her and pinched her chin as if she were still ten. “Still difficult, I see. You always were a petulant little sourpuss.”

She jerked her chin from his fingers and stared him straight in the eye. “Let me go. I want to go home.”

“You are home. At last.” He spread his arms wide.

She shook her head and edged back a step. “I have a life—”

He scowled. It was an expression she remembered well. She resisted pulling back in a flinch. “You're not striking the proper tone with me, Sorcha. A little gratitude, a little excitement at seeing me again, might be in order.”

She sucked in a breath and glanced around. Anywhere but at him. “So. You're running … this enterprise.”

“Yes, impressive, I know. Quite an operation.
Not what I originally planned for myself, but after Istanbul I count myself lucky to be alive. Hunters captured me, EFLA, the Federation—but I convinced them not to destroy me. That I could be useful to them. It wasn't easy, but I finally convinced them of my use. Eventually we came to this arrangement. I'm quite content. For now. It's marvelous—you'll see. The last games we could hardly fit everyone in the seats. We may need to expand soon. Open a second—”

She nodded toward the arena. “Who are the spectators?”

“Who else? Lycan hunters. They need their fun, too.”

She faced him again. “It's disgusting. You deal in death, torture … and make it a grand game.”

His smile vanished. And she was reminded of his fire-quick temper, the flashes of rage that would send her hiding in corners. “Still a judgmental little prig, I see. I had hoped that with age you might grow out of that. Grow and accept what you are. Pity.”

“Apparently, I haven't.”

He scowled. “If this is what you are, you might as well be dead to me.”

“If it helps for you to forget me, then go ahead and do that. Think of me as dead.” She stepped toward the door again. Ingrid inched closer,
ever ready to rein her in, to work her cruel, will-robbing magic.

Her father held out a hand, stalling Ingrid, keeping her from intervening.

“You're right,” Sorcha snarled, waving a hand about the elegant room. “I want no part of this. Or you. You haven't changed. You're as horrible as before. As mad.”

A muscle flickered in his jaw, the only sign that her words affected him. “Sorry to hear that, Sorcha. Especially as you
will
have a great part in all this.” A smile twisted his lips. “One way or another.”

The nape of her neck prickled with warning.

“What do you mean?”

“You're my daughter, my legacy. Either join me and be a true daughter to me or …”

“Or …”

He motioned toward the arena. “You'll have a starring role.”

She blinked. “You can't mean …” Her voice faded. Of course he could. Had she thought that because she was his daughter he might spare her? The way her father looked at her, she knew he meant every word.

“Take her to her cell.” He looked at her, steady and intractable as a stone column, unmoved that he'd just resigned her to a ten-by-ten concrete
cell. And beyond that, a fate in his damned blood games. “When you decide to be my daughter, just say the word, and I'll move you into more comfortable quarters. You're all I have left, Sorcha. I'll never release you.”

His gaze shot back to his demon witch. “Get her on the fight schedule.”

Surprise flickered across Ingrid's face. “You don't want to run her through practice for a few weeks first?”

“A daughter of mine won't need such preparation. She'll fight in the arena tomorrow.”

With those words, Sorcha felt the noose settle firmly about her neck. Turning, she followed Ingrid from the suite. She didn't have a choice, after all.

In the distance, clanging swords and shouts filled the air from the arena far below, and she knew. Soon it would be her turn.

Their footsteps rang out over yet another cobbled walk. This late, the block was fairly deserted. The trees lining the footpath cast suspicious shadows as they walked. “You're certain it was Paris?” Jonah growled.

“I'm certain,” Darby snapped.

He increased his pace. The wind whistled through the branches overhead.

“Would you mind slowing down?”

He merely grunted, his feet biting hard into the ground. He'd been like this ever since they'd arrived in the city. A machine driven to find Sorcha. He knew he was behaving less than logically, but he'd been the one to send Sorcha away—directly into danger. It ate at him, clouded his thinking. She hadn't wanted to go, but he'd forced her to. Shut her out of his life even though she'd wanted to stay. He'd failed her again. Just like before. Only if something happened to her this time, he would not be able to go on.

The irony, of course, was that he'd never
wanted
her to leave. He'd denied himself Sorcha by thinking that he was helping her. Doing the right thing. If he found her again—
when
he found her again—he would not let her go. She was his. Forever.

He nodded to himself, glancing around. “Does any of this look familiar?” Scanning the area, he motioned to the patisserie. The wood door was faded, more pink than red, but maybe … He could no longer recount how many patisseries they had visited since arriving three days ago, searching for one with a red door.

Even this late at night, the delicious aroma of baked bread encircled him. “Let's go over it one more time.”

“Maybe, no … I don't think so. Jonah, they're all starting to look alike now.” She flung her hands up in the air in frustration.

“It is or it isn't, Darby,” he growled.

Darby's shoulders slumped and she moaned, “Jonah, I'm tired. It's late. Let's go back to the hotel.” She strode ahead, her steps fierce slaps on the sidewalk.

He followed, not even close to quitting. Quitting meant quitting on Sorcha. Jonah seized Darby's arm the exact moment she jerked, coming to a halt. She pulled her head back, almost as if she were looking up at something, seeing
something in all the winter-gnarled branches of the tree stretching over them.

He stepped around her cautiously, uttering her name quietly. “Darby?”

She stared upward without blinking. As if she hadn't heard him. As if she didn't know he was beside her at all.

He didn't speak again, merely waited, watching her as the moments crawled past. It could only have been a minute, but the time stretched agonizingly slowly as he waited for her return.

Finally, she sucked in a deep breath, as if emerging from a great pool of water. Blinking, she looked around, her eyes losing their glassy quality. “This is it, where they took her. She's here. Close.”

Elation swelled inside his chest.

She turned, staring into the distance, into the memory of her vision. “The demon witch … she's powerful. Too powerful for Sorcha. For any of us. Sorcha can't beat her.”

He'd given very little thought to the demon witch. He'd been more worried about the lycans who'd taken Sorcha. He'd fought hard not to think about them … with her all this time … the horror she could now be enduring at their hands. He knew what they could do to her. Moonrise was tomorrow. Whatever anguish she endured with them now would magnify then.

Darby closed her eyes for a long moment, as if still seeing it all in her mind. Her breath released in a slow shudder. She reopened her eyes and turned her head to look slowly around, as if finally returning to herself and the present.

“They took her that way.” He stared where she pointed, at the dark alleyway the patisserie shared with an antiques shop. “There's a service entrance on the side of the antiques shop. They went through that door, to an elevator belowground.” She focused her gaze on Jonah again. “But you can't go, Jonah. You'll never come out. You can't beat these monsters.”

And there was more. He could read it in her eyes. He didn't have to think hard to come up with what it was. “You still see it?” His voice fell flat. “She kills me?”

She gave a jerky nod, her eyes dark in the shadows, full and gleaming. “I'm sorry, Jonah, but it's still the same as before. We've done nothing to change the future course of events.”

So Sorcha would kill him? As Darby had first predicted.

He supposed there were worse ways to go. He lifted his face and exhaled, watching the white cloud of his steaming breath for a moment before nodding, a calming peace settling over him. As long as Sorcha lived, he would be at peace. “It's fine, Darby.”

She grabbed hold of his arm. “She's already lost, Jonah. Don't you get that? And so are you if you press on.” She bit her lip, her shoulders sagging. “It's all so hopeless. Maybe I should never have called you.”

“I'm glad you did. I can't walk away and leave her to whatever fate—”

“Yes. I know,” she choked, her voice a rough scrape on the air. Her eyes gleamed wetly up at him. “You love her and you'll go after her. And you'll die. And she'll still be in their prison. No one wins, Jonah.”

“Wouldn't you want someone to come after you?”

A flicker of something passed over her face before she answered him. “Not if there was no hope. Not if it would put him at risk, destroy him. We need you, Jonah … I … do.” She shook her head. “I might be lost, witout hope, but you can still help the covens. Isn't that more reasonable than following a useless cause?”

He'd let logic and reason get in the way before. That's what had led Sorcha into danger in the first place. Logic could go to hell for all he cared.

He touched Darby's face then, brushed his thumb against her cheek. “You've taken me this far. Thank you, Darby.”

“Sure. Thank me for getting you killed.”

“You've always been a friend to me, Darby, even when I wasn't much fun to be around. You got me to Sorcha. Whatever happens, I owe you for that. Go home … or wherever it is you need to be. And try to stay out of trouble.”

She smiled weakly. “I can't ever seem to do that.” Her smile slipped then. “I'm a witch. Trouble always finds me.”