Refuge (54 page)

My head was too full to concentrate on
checkers. “Would you play the piano for me instead?”

He gave my arm a little squeeze. “It would be
my pleasure.”

“Sahir, you’re awake.” I ran to his hospital
bed, and he lifted a hand to take mine. “I was so worried about you
when they brought you in here last night.” I’d come by to check on
him first thing this morning and the healers told me he was still
out from the drugs they’d given him. They said the effects should
wear off in a few hours.

He let out a small laugh then winced. “Based
on how I feel right now, I can only imagine what kind of shape I
was in. Last thing I remember is opening the cages and then getting
ambushed by a couple of vampires.”

“Alex saved your life, did you know that?”
His eyes widened, and he shook his head. I told him what Terrence
had said about the burnt vampire bodies they’d found next to Sahir.
“He and Minuet and the hounds saved us, too. If you hadn’t let them
out, a lot more of us would be dead.” I’d found out that the roars
and screams I heard from the other side of the grounds last night
were from Alex and the hellhounds mowing down every vampire in
their way as they tried to get to me.

“I thought those hounds of yours were going
to tear their cage apart. I think they heard the vampires before I
did. As soon as I realized we were under attack, I knew they would
find you. I don’t know what possessed me to release Alex, but I’m
glad I did.” He smiled weakly. “I told you wyverns love to hunt
vampires.”

“He looked like he was having fun. Minuet and
the hounds came back this morning, but there’s been no sign of
Alex. I hope he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Sahir coughed, and I handed him a glass of
water from the table near the bed. After he’d taken a long drink he
leaned back with a groan. With the severe injuries he’d sustained,
it was going to take him another day to get back on his feet.
Still, it was miraculous that he was awake and sitting up
already.

“I hear they’ve already sent a team to find
him, and then they are going to send him to Argentina.”

I nodded wistfully. “You know, I think I’m
actually going to miss him.”

“Sara,” Tristan called from the doorway, and
I turned to look at him. His expression was serious and it spoke of
the weight on his shoulders today. I was pretty sure he had slept
very little since the attack, and he had no intention of resting
until every detail of last night was uncovered. “Michael is awake.
I am going to talk to him, but he’s asking to see you. You don’t
have to talk to him if you don’t want to.”

I thought about the urgent email from David
I’d read this morning, the email I’d received last night but not
read because Michael had come to get me before I had the chance to
open it.
Do not
trust this Michael kid. He’s been talking to vampires online for at
least a month.

My chest constricted every time I replayed
the words in my head. If I’d gotten the email one minute earlier,
if Michael had shown up a minute later, we never would have been
led into the trap. I would have gone to Tristan and Nikolas and
told them about Michael, and the attack might have been averted.
Olivia and Mark and the fallen warriors would still be alive.

Misunderstanding my hesitation, Tristan
nodded and started to turn away. “No, I want to.” I knew Michael’s
motive for betraying us, but I wanted to hear what he had to say to
me. Maybe it could help me understand how I had been so deceived by
someone I’d believed was my friend.

I told Sahir I’d see him later. Then I
followed Tristan to a room with a guard standing outside. When we
stepped inside, I saw Nikolas standing near the door and Celine
sitting in a chair not far from him. Nikolas’s angry expression
made it clear he was not happy about me talking to Michael, but he
wasn’t going to try to stop me.

“You came?” said a small voice, drawing my
attention to the pale blond boy huddled in the hospital bed.
Michael had one arm folded over his chest and the other was chained
to the bed railing. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I wasn’t sure I would come either.” I paused
then walked over to stand next to the bed. Up close, he looked even
paler than usual, and I could see dark shadows beneath his eyes.
“How are you feeling?”

“O-okay.” His blue eyes brimmed with tears.
“Sara, I-I’m sorry for what I did to you. I know you won’t forgive
me, but I want you to know that I didn’t ever want to hurt
you.”

“You didn’t hurt just me, Michael. Olivia and
Mark are dead.” The words came out harsher than I’d intended, but
the pain of watching Olivia die was still too raw. I didn’t know if
that was something you ever got over.

Michael’s face drained of color, and I
realized no one had told him about them. “Oh God,” he moaned and
tears spilled down his face. “No one was supposed to die. They said
if I gave them you, they would give me Matthew.”

“And you believed them?” What had he thought
the Master planned to do to me once he had me? Or had that not
mattered to him?

“I had to.” His eyes pleaded with me to
understand. “I messed up everything else, and it was my last chance
of getting Matthew back.”

Tristan stepped forward, looking a lot more
composed than I felt. “What do you mean? What did you mess up?”

Michael stared down at the blanket, unable to
face Tristan. “I-I was supposed to scare Sara and make her leave. I
did things to make her want to go, but she never did.”

“What things?” My mind replayed every bad
thing that had happened to me in the last month. “Did you have
anything to do with us getting attacked in the movie theater?”

He darted a glance at me and looked down
again. “I only told them what movie you were going to see. I didn’t
know they would sic demons on all those people.”

I was right. There had been a vampire nearby
when we left the movie theater. But what had they thought to gain
by sending lamprey demons after us? “What about the vampires at the
party we went to? Did you tell them we would be there?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t even know you
were going to a party. I swear.”

“What else did you do?” Tristan asked
sternly.

“I gave Sara some drex venom.” I gasped
loudly, and Michael swung his gaze to me. “It was supposed to make
you sad and depressed so you’d want to leave. It’s not supposed to
make people sick. I didn’t know what to do when you got so
sick.”

“You did that to me?” Drex demons disabled
their victims by injecting them with their venom, which was like a
powerful psychotropic drug. It should have, at the very most,
caused me to have hallucinations. But I had been so sick I could
barely move from my bed. I had a suspicion that drex venom and Fae
blood did not mix well. No wonder it had taken troll bile to cure
me. Trolls are immune to all toxins and poisons.

“Where on earth did you get drex venom?”
Celine asked.

“They keep a lot of venoms in the medical
ward for making antidotes,” Michael said, and I shivered to think
of what other poisons he could have used on me. It was a miracle I
was still alive.

“What else did you do?”

Michael cowered from the barely contained
fury in Nikolas’s voice, and it took him several minutes to answer.
“I-I let the hellhounds out so they would scare her. I did it when
there were lots of warriors around to keep her from getting
hurt.”

“How did you do that without anyone seeing
you?” Tristan asked calmly, shooting Nikolas a look that said “let
me handle this.”

“They let me hang out in the control room
sometimes, and I saw Ben entering in his security code when he was
on duty. After that, it was easy to log on from my laptop.”

While everyone digested how easily a
fifteen-year-old computer nerd had broken into their top-notch
security system, I thought of something else. “You set the karks on
me, didn’t you?”

“I sprayed some scarab demon pheromone on
you. I used just a drop to get them worked up. I had no idea they’d
go nuts like that.”

I threw up my hands. “I don’t get it. The
vampires wanted me dead and you had so many chances to finish me
off. Why didn’t you just kill me and be done with it?”

He recoiled as if I’d slapped him. “I
couldn’t do that. I never wanted to hurt you at all. I just wanted
you to leave so they would see I did what they asked me and let
Matthew go. And they said they wanted you alive.”

“So after all that, they suddenly decided to
come here to get me themselves. Why?”

He looked away again, and his chest rose as
he took a deep breath. “They asked about your uncle . . . and I
told them he was human again. They wanted to know how, but I didn’t
know how it happened. That’s when they told me I had to bring you
to them or Matthew would die.”

They know what I can do.
A fist-sized lump of ice
formed in my stomach. It was no wonder they were desperate enough
to attack a Mohiri stronghold.

Tristan walked over to stand beside me. “How
did you make contact with them in the first place?”

Michael swallowed hard. “I was on a forum
where you look for missing people. I posted about Matthew a bunch
of times, and a month ago, someone contacted me. They said if I
helped them, they would tell me where to find Matthew.”

“Oh, Michael.” I knew the kind of message
board he was talking about. It wasn’t a normal missing persons
website. The people on there were looking for family and friends
who they believed were taken by aliens or something supernatural.
I’d used them myself when I was looking for a sign of Madeline’s
whereabouts.

He shook his head fervently. “You don’t
understand. They sent me pictures of him. He’s alive.”

The denial in his eyes tore at my heart. “If
you posted an old picture of Matthew, it would be easy for them to
find someone who looks like he would today.”

“You’re wrong! You think I don’t know my own
twin?” He twisted his fingers in the blanket. “I failed him.”

I glanced helplessly at Tristan. “Michael,
you see now that the vampires were using you, right? They never had
Matthew.”

“You’re wrong!” he yelled, getting agitated.
“I saw him. I talked to him.”

“They tricked you.”

“No!” Michael’s eyes blazed and for the first
time, I saw the madness in them. “He’s alive and now he’s going to
die because I couldn’t give them you.” His screams grew louder, and
he began to thrash wildly in his restraints. His sweet face
suddenly twisted into one I didn’t recognize. “This is all your
fault. Why couldn’t you just leave?
You
killed him, Sara! You killed my
brother.”

I put my hands over my mouth and backed away
from the bed as two healers ran into the room. One held Michael
down while the other injected him with a sedative. The powerful
drug kicked in quickly and soon the only sound in the room was my
ragged breathing. Nikolas made a move toward me, but I shook my
head.

“What will you do with him now?” I asked
Tristan.

Tristan looked at me with eyes full of
sorrow. “We have a facility in Mumbai where they’ve had some
success rehabilitating some of the older orphans we’ve found. I’ll
contact Janek and have him take Michael there.” He ran a hand
through his hair. “Sara, what he said . . . ”

“He’s delusional, I know.” Michael’s outburst
had hurt, but not because I believed him when he said it was my
fault. It hurt me to see how much pain he was in.

Celine stood and waved a hand at the
unconscious boy. “Please tell me it’s not that easy to get to our
children and turn them against us.”

Her insensitivity rubbed against my already
frayed nerves. “He’s sick and they used that against him. How about
a little compassion?”

“You expect me to show compassion to the
person who betrayed us?”

Tristan stepped in before I could reply. “The
welfare of the boy was our responsibility, Celine, and we failed
him. I don’t believe our young people are at risk. This was a
special case.” He tilted his head toward the door. “And I think we
should continue this conversation elsewhere.”

“I’m done here,” Celine said angrily and
swept out of the room.

I walked out behind her and waited for
Tristan and Nikolas. They walked out, deep in conversation, and I
was about to excuse myself, but I stopped when I heard what they
were saying.

“If they know what Sara did to Nate, they
will stop at nothing to get to her,” Nikolas said in a low
voice.

Tristan nodded. “I’ve already spoken to the
rest of the Council. We are doubling our force here and bringing in
five special teams to hunt this vampire.”

Nikolas’s brows drew together. “It’s not
enough. You saw the small army he was able to assemble and send
against us. One child Hale witch brought down half our sentries
without blinking. I’m shocked it hasn’t been tried before. You can
be sure they will try to use them again now that they know how
effective they are. And the only person who can go up against a
Hale witch is the one we are trying to keep safe.”

“What do you propose?”

Nikolas’s eyes met mine, and the hard set of
his jaw told me he was going to say something he knew I would not
like. “We need to move her to a new location, somewhere known only
to a handful of us. Overseas would be best.”

“Hold on.” I stepped up to them. “I’m not
moving again, especially not to some strange place where I’ll be on
lockdown twenty-four seven.”

“Nikolas makes a good point, Sara,” Tristan
said like he was actually considering it. “It would not be
permanent, just until we deal with this Master.”

“That could take years. I am not going to
spend the rest of my life running and hiding while you two hunt
this vampire. Forget it.”

Nikolas shook his head. “Actually, I will be
coming with you.”