Refuge (46 page)

Searching his pockets, I found a set of keys,
and as soon as my fingers closed around them, I felt the same magic
in them that protected the doors. I stood and adjusted my T-shirt,
then opened the door on the other end of the room. It was covered
in the same etchings, and it was even heavier than the first door,
closing with a solid thump behind me. I found myself in another
hallway lined with metal doors. Each door had a small barred window
through which I could see an empty windowless cell. Cold hit me in
the chest and my heart sped up as I walked past the cells, knowing
that one of them held Nate. Fear and anxiety churned my stomach as
I tried to mentally prepare for what I was going to face and what I
was about to do.

“Come to visit me at last,” drawled a cold
voice I barely recognized before I reached the last door. I sucked
in a sharp breath and stumbled, not as prepared to hear his voice
as I thought I was. I took a moment to steel myself then stepped up
to the door. The cell was dark, and I flipped a switch beside the
door, making light flood the small room and revealing the figure
chained by his hands and feet to the back wall. His dark hair was
lank, and his face looked paler and thinner than it had yesterday,
if that was possible. It was his eyes that shocked me the most.
Instead of the familiar bright green, they were dark, almost black,
and they stared hungrily at me now, the eyes of a predator.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked,
fighting to keep the tremble out of my voice.

“You forget I have a heightened sense of
smell now, and you . . . ” He lifted his face and sniffed the air.
“They were right. You smell delicious.”

I shuddered.
Remember, this is not Nate.
“Tristan said
you wanted to see me.”

Nate chuckled. “I did, but I am surprised he
and Nikolas let you come to see me alone. I always knew that
warrior had a soft spot for – ”

“I didn’t come down here to talk about
Nikolas,” I snapped. I’d come here with a purpose, and I would not
let him distract me from it. “Did you have something to say to
me?”

He shrugged and his chains clinked. “I have
many things to say to you. Where would you like to start?”

“How did this happen to you?”

The question seemed to take him by surprise,
and he stared at me for a moment before answering. “I met a
beautiful redhead who told me she was going to change my life
forever.” One corner of his mouth lifted and he leered at me
suggestively. “She did not disappoint.”

I swallowed dryly. “What was her name?”

“Why? So you can hunt her down like a good
little vampire killer?” he scoffed.

“Something like that.”
And make her tell me who her Master is
before I kill her.

“Sorry to disappoint you, kid, but I’ll take
that secret to the grave . . . which should be any day now if your
guardians have anything to say about it.”

“Why?” I burst out. “Why would you protect
someone who sent you here to die?”

He scowled at me. “You would never understand
the loyalty and love I have for my maker. She made me strong and
gave me back my legs. That was all I ever wanted. I certainly never
wanted to be saddled with a sniveling, ungrateful little brat who
did nothing but hurt the people who cared about her. Your father
died because of you. Even your own mother could not bear to be
around you.”

“That’s not true! My dad and Nate loved me,
and I loved them and would have done anything to keep them
safe.”

“Well, judging by my current accommodations,
you aren’t doing such a bang-up job.”

Tears clouded my vision, and I blinked them
away. “I never meant for you . . . for Nate to get hurt. I know you
don’t care, but I wanted to tell you that.”

He let out a humorless laugh. “You’re right;
I don’t care.”

“Then I guess we don’t have anything else to
say to each other.” I took a deep tremulous breath and inserted the
key into the door lock.

“What are you doing?”

I opened the door and slipped inside, closing
it behind me with a loud click that echoed down the empty hallway.
Dropping the keys on the floor, I faced the vampire that watched me
warily.
Be strong
and remember you’re doing this for Nate. You owe him
this.

“Like you said, I’m a vampire killer,” I said
emotionlessly.

“And you are going to kill your own uncle?”
He asked with a sneer, but there was less confidence in his voice
now.

The rage that had been simmering inside me
bubbled to the surface. “You aren’t my uncle. You’re the demon who
stole his body.”

“Everything that was your uncle is in me. Do
you really want to destroy all that is left of him?”

I clenched my fists and took a step closer.
“You might have his memories and his face, but you don’t have his
soul. There is nothing left of
him
in you.” As soon as I said the words, I
knew they were true. Even after I’d seen him with fangs bared, even
as I stood outside his cell, a tiny part of me believed, or hoped,
that Nate was not truly gone forever. Cold acceptance settled over
me.

“What are you going to do? Are you really
going to put a blade through my heart, your uncle’s heart?” he
asked, still trying to make me believe he was Nate.

“It’s not Nate’s heart anymore,” I replied
flatly walking toward him. “And I don’t need a knife.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have Nate’s memories, so you know what I
am. Do you know why demons are so afraid of the Fae?”

Fear crept into his eyes for the first time
and his Adam’s apple bobbed.

“I’m not just a vampire killer; I’m a
one-of-a-kind demon slayer. You took Nate from me, so you have the
honor of being my first kill. Well, not my first kill, but the
first like this.”

His eyes bulged as electricity crackled in
the air around me.

“First, I’m going to take care of you. Then,
I’m going to leave here and hunt down your maker and your precious
Master, and I’m going to kill every blood sucker that gets in my
way.”

Muffled shouts from the outer room drew my
attention from the vampire. It sounded like Ben had awakened and
called in reinforcements. If I was going to finish this, I had to
do it now.

I turned back to the vampire. “Nate, wherever
you are, please forgive me for not keeping you safe.” Despite my
resolve, tears spilled down my cheeks as I called forth my
power.

“Sara, no!” Tristan yelled through the window
in the door. “Whatever you’re planning to do, you have to
stop.”

My breath caught but I did not look at him.
“I’m going to kill a vampire.”

Tristan lowered his voice. “Listen to me,
Sara; you don’t want to do this. Killing a vampire is one thing,
but if you kill Nate, it will haunt you forever.”

My hair crackled with static and lifted from
my shoulders as the power surrounding me grew. “He’s not Nate. He’s
a monster.”

“Yes, he is, but you will see only Nate’s
face when you remember this. Nate would not want that for you.”

“I – ”

“Sara, open the door.”

I closed my eyes at the sound of Nikolas’s
deep voice. Something tugged at my chest, and a part of me wanted
to run to him, to let him wrap his arms around me and chase away
the evil in my life. But a larger part of me knew I would never
find my own strength if I hid behind his.

My hands tingled and began to glow from the
power coursing through them. I could see the light reflected in the
vampire’s terrified eyes as he struggled violently in his bonds.
Behind me I heard running feet and then the distinct sound of a key
being fitted into the lock on the cell door.

The vampire screamed when my hands touched
his chest, and he began to writhe convulsively, even though I
hadn’t yet released the force of my power. Just being touched by
Fae magic was unbearable to him. I stared at him for several
seconds as I gathered more power and prepared to strike.

The door swung open, and I felt the air shift
as someone moved toward me with incredible speed.
No!

I released my power and felt the vampire jerk
as he let out a strangled shriek. The smell of scorched flesh
filled my nose, and I heard a thump and a curse somewhere behind
me. The vampire hung limply in his chains, but I knew he was still
alive because we were connected by the power flowing between us. My
mind reeled from the knowledge that I was inside a vampire. I was
overcome by the need to see the vamhir demon before I destroyed it,
to look upon the thing that had turned a wonderful man into a
monster.

Unlike Mori demons that live in the brain,
vamhir demons attach themselves to the heart of their victims. My
power moved through organs that looked healthy and normal until it
found the misshapen lump that barely resembled a human heart. Most
of the heart was encased in a thick translucent white membrane that
resembled a jellyfish, with tendrils that were fused to the spine
and brain stem. I prodded the membrane, and it trembled, making the
heart stutter.

This
was the powerful vamhir demon? For all a
vampire’s power and strength, the demon was nothing more than a
gelatinous parasite that needed a host to survive. Seeing this one
weakened and in its natural form took away the mystery and
dissolved some of my fear of vampires. It didn’t dampen the pain of
losing Nate, but it gave me a deeper understanding of my enemy and
showed me the demon’s true weakness.

The demon rippled, and I felt the vampire
stir. I jabbed at it, and it stilled again. Enough studying it. It
was time to end this. I pushed forward until I surrounded the demon
without touching it. It quivered as if it knew what I planned to
do. My soul wept for the heart that would soon no longer beat, but
I felt no empathy or mercy for the creature I was about to
destroy.

I love you, Nate
, I said silently as my power
enveloped the demon.

The demon let out an unearthly scream,
twisting and pushing desperately against my hold. I opened myself
further and more power poured out of the well deep inside me until
it felt like lightning flowed through my veins. In a disconnected
part of my mind, I knew I was tapping into a force I had never
touched before, and I felt a tiny brush of fear mixed with wild
exhilaration. I had never felt so alive or aware of the world
around me. I could hear people breathing behind me and a mouse
scratching behind the walls. I could feel the living earth beneath
the thick stone floor. I smelled the droplets of water in the damp
air of the cell and the stench of dead flesh that clung to the
vampire. And inside the vampire, I saw life . . . and death.

Alien words filled my head, and I heard a
hideous voice that made me want to grab my ears and scream.
Something clicked in my mind, like a door opening, and I realized I
was hearing the demon’s thoughts and memories
. . . . good strong body . . . so thirsty
. . . but I don’t want to die . . . yes, my maker . . . pain . . .
so much pain . . .

As soon as it had come, the demon’s voice
faded away and images began to flood my mind so fast they were a
blur of color. I reached out and snatched one and stared in
confusion at the face of a little girl, no older than two or three.
I grabbed another and saw the same little girl, a few years older
with chestnut curls and happy green eyes.
It’s me
, I thought in wonder,
reaching for another image then another.

Me sitting on a chair in a white hospital
room, my eyes dark and terrified.

Me curled up in a small bed, clenching a
teddy bear.

Me grinning as I cut the cake at my tenth
birthday party with Roland and Peter.

Me pulling a gift from beneath the Christmas
tree.

Me covered in chocolate batter the first time
I tried to make Nate a birthday cake.

Me holding the ragged white cat I rescued
when I was fourteen.

Me standing in the doorway, wearing a pale
yellow Faerie dress.

They were all Nate’s memories of me, of my
life with him, and each one of them glowed with a father’s love for
his child. I’d spent my life missing my dad, and all along Nate had
thought of me as a daughter. It filled me with bittersweet joy to
realize the depth of his love after he was gone.

More of Nate’s memories, dark and terrifying,
flooded my mind. I saw an exotic red-haired woman in a revealing
black dress.
Ava
Bryant,
she said in a sultry voice. The next instant, her
face twisted and fangs sprouted from her mouth as she struck. I
heard Nate moaning in pain and saying,
I’ll never tell you where she is.
The memories became hazy after that, and I knew it was during his
transition. The last coherent thought he had before the vamhir
demon possessed him completely was how glad he was that I would not
be alone.

The images and voices faded away into a gray
mist and it was just me and the demon again. The demon looked
darker and harder with small cracks forming in its surface, and the
heart beat in a weak irregular rhythm. The heart that had once held
so much love for me. I would not let it suffer any longer.

It was love, not anger, that filled me as
power exploded from me in a white flash so brilliant it blinded me
through my closed eyelids. I felt the vampire’s death throes, and I
knew the instant the demon shattered into nothingness and the heart
stopped beating forever. A wail of grief welled up from deep inside
me, and I heard a voice from my own memory.
Those who hunt you will ultimately give
you the power to become the thing they fear the most.

Far above me, a pinpoint of light shone like
a beacon, and I swam through the murky darkness toward it. My arms
and legs were heavy, threatening to drag me back down. It would be
so easy to just drift in the warm darkness, but the light called to
me. I pushed forward with every ounce of willpower until the light
grew brighter and I heard muffled sounds: voices, beeping, music.
Wait. Was that . . . Carly Simon?