Refuge (45 page)

He put a piece of steak in his mouth and made
a moaning sound. “Oh man, this is amazing. If I’d known you were
eating like this, I would have come to visit sooner.” His eyes
widened as he remembered the reason he was here. “Ah hell, Sara, I
didn’t mean – ”

“I know you didn’t.” I smiled despite the
ache in my chest. Grief is not a fleeting emotion. This pain would
be inside me for a long time, and all I could do was learn to live
with it and hope that, someday, I’d be able to breathe again
without hurting.

We talked mostly about the people we knew
back home for the rest of the meal. After our late lunch, I took
them up to my room where we could be alone. Roland and I sat on the
bed with pillows piled behind us like we used to do at his house.
Peter stretched across the foot of the bed with his head propped up
on his hand, looking like he didn’t know what to say next.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Roland asked
quietly.

“I don’t know how.” How could I begin to
describe how it felt to see Nate standing there as a monster? How
it felt when he told me the Master had done this to him because of
me?

It took me a while to get the story out.
Roland and Peter listened without interrupting while I told them
about Nate’s phone call a few days ago and how he had arrived last
night. Roland’s hand covered mine while I relived every horrific
detail, and I knew I couldn’t get through this without him and
Peter.

We spent the afternoon remembering our
childhood and sharing memories of Nate. I cried a few times, but I
drew strength from their presence and our shared history. Late that
afternoon, Tristan came to see me, looking like a man who carried
the world on his shoulders. I introduced him to my friends and he
graciously welcomed them. He told us he’d given Roland the room
across from me and Peter’s was down the hall so they would be close
to me. Tristan told them they were welcome to stay as long as they
wanted. Then he pulled me aside to ask how I was doing.

“I’m okay I guess. How – how is he?”

“He’s hungry, but we haven’t harmed him. So
far he hasn’t told us anything helpful.”

I tried not to think of Nate somewhere down
below, hungry for human blood. “Do you think he will?”

Tristan shook his head wearily. “If we kept
him down there long enough, maybe.”

“Why would he come here, knowing he would” –
I swallowed hard – “knowing he would die?”

“My guess is he was compelled by a mature
vampire. New vampires are as susceptible to compulsion as
humans.”

It was the perfect revenge. Make Nate a
vampire and send him here so I would have to kill him or watch him
die.

“Sara, he’s asking to see you,” Tristan said,
and his expression told me how he felt about it. “I don’t think
it’s a good idea, but I wanted the decision to be yours.”

“Maybe he wants to say good-bye.” Even though
I knew better, a tiny spark of hope flared.

“He’s not Nate anymore, not the Nate you
knew.” Tristan ran a hand through his hair. “He will only try to
hurt you as much as he can before he dies.”

I stared at the floor. I ached to see Nate,
but I wasn’t ready to face the evil thing living in his body. “How
long before you . . . ? How long does he have?”

“A day, two at the most. By then we’ll know
if he is willing to talk. If he was compelled, he may not be able
to reveal anything.”

Panic gripped me. A day and I would lose him
forever? “Couldn’t we hold him for a while and see if he talks?
Maybe if he gets hungry enough he’ll – ”

Tristan gripped my shoulders firmly. “Is that
what you want, to keep him down in a cell, slowly starving to
death? Because that is what will happen, and I can tell you it’s
not a painless way for a vampire to die.”

Tears filled my eyes. “But – ”

“I wish more than anything that I could fix
this and take your pain away, but keeping the vampire alive will
not help you. It will only prolong your grief, and I will not do
that.” His words were hard, but his eyes were gentle. “The Nate you
loved would not want that for you, and he would expect me to do
what I can to shield you from that kind of pain.”

I pressed my trembling lips together and
turned away from him. “Tomorrow. I want to see him tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll arrange it.” He laid a hand on my
shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

I stared out the window for a long moment
after I heard him leave. Why did people always say they were sorry
when you lost someone? It wasn’t like they were responsible for
your pain.

“You all right?” Roland asked.

“No.” I was too tired and drained to try to
pretend my world wasn’t falling apart. I faced him and Peter. “Will
you come with me tomorrow to see Nate? I’ll understand if you don’t
want to.”

“Of course, we will,” he said without
hesitation, and Peter nodded.

I went to sit beside him on the bed again.
“I’m so glad you guys are here. I don’t think I could get through
this without you. The people here are nice, but they didn’t know
Nate.”

Roland took my hand in his. “We’ll be here as
long as you need us . . . and longer if they feed us steak every
day.”

I let out a shaky laugh. “You and your
stomach.”

“Speaking of food,” Peter cut in. “It must be
almost time for dinner.”

The last thing I wanted was to be around
everyone, but I couldn’t expect my friends to go to dinner without
me. “Give me a few minutes, and then we’ll go down.”

I was in the bathroom, splashing water on my
face, when I thought I heard a knock on the door. Drying my face, I
walked out to find Roland and Peter sitting at the small table with
a large covered tray between them.

“A girl named Jordan brought dinner for us,”
Roland told me. “She said to tell you to let her know if you need
anything, but she doesn’t walk dogs. You have dogs?”

I shook my head at Jordan’s thinly-veiled
joke; leave it to her to try to make me laugh. However, I didn’t
think Roland and Peter would find her werewolf humor funny.

“Just the hellhounds,” I said.

Peter made a noise. “I wouldn’t exactly call
hellhounds dogs. By the way, when do we get to meet them?”

“I’ll take you down tomorrow.”

“Cool.” He lifted the cover off the tray.
“Hmm, these look awesome.”

Jordan must have known something about
werewolf appetites because the tray held five huge double
hamburgers with the works and a large basket of fries. Her comments
were soon forgotten as the boys dug into the food. I took one
burger and nibbled at it, and by the time they had polished off the
other burgers, I had barely eaten half of mine. I gave the rest of
it to Roland who finished it in no time.

Peter picked up a napkin-wrapped bundle from
the tray and looked inside. “A blueberry muffin? Strange thing to
bring for dinner.”

My heart swelled at Jordan’s thoughtfulness.
She acted the tough chick all the time, but she was a lot nicer
than she let on. I took the muffin from Peter and broke it into
three even pieces before I laid them on the floor beside my
bed.

“What the – ?” Peter’s eyes grew wide when
the first little fiend appeared and snatched up his prize before
retreating beneath the bed again. “You have imps in a demon hunter
home . . . and you’re feeding them?”

I watched the second piece of muffin
disappear. “They came from home. They stowed away in my stuff.”

“And you let them stay in your room?”

“Why not? They practically lived in my room
back home.”

Peter made a face. “Because they’re demons
and they would steal the fillings out of your mouth.”

“They’re pretty quiet and they don’t mess
with my things. Although, I don’t know how it’s going to work when
Oscar comes to live – ” My breath caught. Nate was supposed to
bring Oscar when he came for Thanksgiving. Nate, who had been in
the middle of his transition when I last spoke to him on the phone,
and who had walked around our apartment as a vampire and touched
our things, defiling our home. Fresh pain stabbed my chest. A
vampire would show no mercy to an animal, especially one I cared
about.

“What is it?” Roland asked.

“Oscar and Daisy – he probably killed them,”
I said in a cracked voice.

“You don’t know that. Animals sense evil, so
they might have run away when Nate turned.”

When Nate turned.
I had seen Nate as a vampire with
my own eyes, but hearing it from Roland made it all suddenly,
agonizingly real. Nate was gone, and my life would never be the
same again.

I pushed away from the table and ran to the
bathroom where I promptly threw up the little bit of food I’d
eaten.

“Sara, you okay?” Roland called through the
closed door.

“I just need a minute.” I splashed cold water
on my face and stared at my pale reflection in the mirror. My lips
were almost colorless, and the shadows around my eyes made my face
look tired and sickly. But my haggard appearance was nothing
compared to the damage inside me. If it wasn’t for the constant
ache in my chest, I would have believed my heart was broken into
pieces.

“I’m really an orphan now,” I whispered to
the ashen face staring back at me.

I would give anything to bring Nate back. But
there was no bad guy to barter with this time, no sacrificing
myself to save Nate. The Master had seen to that. He didn’t take
Nate to replace Eli. He took him to torture me and to show me that
no one I loved was safe from him. How many more would he hurt to
get to me? Would he go after Roland or Peter next, or maybe the
kids at my old school?

I couldn’t live with that.

My hands gripped the edge of the sink until
they turned white and I shook with helpless rage.
Stop it. That is exactly how he wants
you to feel.
I was playing right into his hands, and if I
didn’t do something about it, he would win. Anguish and fury built
in me. I remembered my dad’s mutilated body and I imagined what
Nate had gone through. Heat spread through me, and I watched my
hair lift off my shoulders as tiny blue sparks skimmed across my
skin.

Is this why he fears me?
I could knock out a baby
vampire and my power was getting stronger every day. Someday, I’d
be able to take down an older vampire . . . maybe even one as old
and strong as a Master. I needed no weapon because my touch was
lethal to demons.

I was, in essence, the perfect demon
slayer.

And I knew what I had to do.

I DRIED MY face and opened the door to find
Roland hovering outside.

“You look beat, Sara. You should try to get
some sleep.”

“I am tired,” I lied. “I think I’ll lie down
for a bit. You guys don’t have to stay with me, though.”

“Pete and I will go across the hall and watch
TV for a while. I bet you guys have all the movie channels here.
You come over when you finish your nap.”

“Okay,” I agreed, although sleep was the last
thing on my mind.

I waited for several minutes after I heard
Roland’s door close before I left my room and shut my door quietly
behind me. Most people were at dinner so the hallways were almost
empty as I made my way down to the lower level that housed the
holding cells and interrogation rooms. Down here the walls were
made of smooth stone and there were no windows that I could see. I
shivered in my sweater, and I didn’t know if it was because of the
cooler air or what I was about to do.

At the bottom of the stairs a short hallway
stretched before me, with a thick metal door at the other end. As I
drew close to the door, I could see the intricate runes etched into
the metal, preventing anyone but a Mohiri from opening the door,
and I could feel the buzz of strong magic running through it when I
put my hand over the metal surface. I paused with my hand on the
door. When and how had I started to sense magic?

Turning the large iron knob, I pulled the
door toward me, revealing a dimly lit room on the other side. What
I didn’t see until I walked inside was Ben posted to the right of
the door. He gave me a stern look when I entered the room.

“You should not be down here.”

“I want to see him.”

Ben folded his arms across his chest. “I’m
sorry, but I can’t let you in there without an order from
Tristan.”

“He’s my uncle and I have a right to see
him,” I argued, wondering how I was going to get past the huge
warrior. “Couldn’t you make an exception?”

Sympathy flashed in his eyes. “That vampire
is not your uncle anymore. I am sorry for your loss, but I cannot
allow you to see him unless I receive orders. If you wish, I can
contact Tristan and ask him.”

My mind worked furiously. Tristan might let
me see Nate tonight, but he and Nikolas would insist on
accompanying me, and I’d never be able to do what I came to do. I
could tell by Ben’s determined expression that he was not going to
be persuaded to let me in without permission.

I have to get in there.

I was desperate enough to try almost anything
to get into those holding cells, so when the idea came to me, I
didn’t stop to debate whether it was a bad one or not. I moved
backward and let my body slump against the wall.

Ben immediately moved toward me. “Are you all
right?”

“Just a little dizzy,” I said, making my
voice sound weak.

He took my arm and guided me to the only
bench in the room. “Sit here and I’ll call someone to assist you
back to your room.”

I caught his hand as he reached for his
earpiece. “Ben, if this works, I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“If what – ?” His eyes widened, and I saw
shock pass over his face as static crackled over my hand and a
small jolt of power shot into him. For a moment, he stood there
staring at me, and all I could think was
oh crap!
Then his eyes rolled up in
his head and he fell to his knees. He toppled sideways, and I
jumped and caught his head before it hit the hard stones. The last
thing I wanted was to give him a concussion on top of everything
else. I checked his pulse and breathing and smiled grimly. The jolt
I gave him was the same kind I’d used on Chris, so I knew Ben
wasn’t going to be down for long. And he was not going to be happy
when he woke up. “Sorry, Ben, but I had to do this,” I said softly,
pulling off my sweater to pillow his head.