The Eternity Cure (27 page)

Kanin closed his eyes, his face tormented. When he opened them, I saw the last of the madness fade away, and for a moment, his expression was a raw, gaping wound. Horror, shame, guilt and despair lay open on his face as he looked down at me, recognition breaking through at last.

“Allison.”

I almost collapsed in relief. “Yeah,” I whispered, forcing a pained smile as he stared at me as if I were a ghost. “It’s me. Damn you, Kanin. You were a pain in the ass to find, you know that?”

Kanin didn’t answer. Without warning, his hands rose, pressing to either side of my face as I went rigid. His stare was awed, hopeful, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was real and had to touch me to make sure I wasn’t a phantom.

“You’re here.” I barely caught the whisper, and Kanin’s eyes closed again as he bowed his head. It was a broken sound, a man desperately grasping at the last thread of hope, when he had been in the darkness for so long. “You came.”

And, as I stood, shocked, against the wall of the cell, Kanin sank to his knees in front of me, holding the backs of my legs. The top of his bowed head pressed against my thighs. “You came,” he repeated, a chant holding him to sanity. I swallowed the lump in my throat and touched his broad shoulders, biting my lip to keep the tears in check, as the cell door opened with a creak, and the Prince beckoned us both to freedom.

Chapter 14

Zeke was waiting for me when the elevator doors opened with their annoying ding. Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, he straightened quickly as I stepped into the hall with Salazar and the guards, relieved as ever to be on solid ground.

“Oh God, Allie,” he said, worried blue eyes straying to my neck, the blood on my skin and collar. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“I’m fine.” My fingers went self-consciously to my throat, feeling the slight punctures Kanin had left behind. “It’s nothing. I’ve already fed, don’t worry about it.” Dr. Emerson had given me a blood bag when I emerged from the dungeon with Kanin and the Prince, and though it was cold and disgusting, I’d choked it down. The wounds hadn’t closed completely, and even now, my neck still ached where Kanin had bitten me. The doctor insisted that was normal, that the pain would fade in a day or two, though the faint, tiny scars might remain forever. It was just the nature of a vampire biting one of his own.

Emerson had also insisted that Kanin remain under supervision for at least a night, claiming that, even with a vampire’s remarkable healing, it would still be a few days for a vampire to fully recover after being starved for so long. My sire was down in the hospital wing now, being watched carefully by vampiric doctors and several guards, but he was no longer going mad in a lonely dungeon. I had felt a little apprehensive about leaving him, since I’d come so far to find him, but Salazar had assured me he would be well taken care of. That Kanin was a guest in his tower now, and all his needs would be met. That there was no need to worry about my sire; he would allow no harm to befall him, for any reason.

I believed him. After all, he needed Kanin alive and well to go after Sarren.

Salazar regarded me with blank eyes. “I have business to attend,” he stated, bored and coldly polite once more. “If you have need of me, please inform a pet or a guard. I’ve told you where you can find your temporary quarters, and the servants can attend to your other needs. Feel free to wander about, but remember, you are not to leave the tower until you are ready to go after Sarren. I suggest you do that soon. Tomorrow, perhaps. As soon as the sun goes down.”

“We’ll leave when Kanin is well enough,” I said flatly. The Prince’s mouth twitched in a humorless smile.

“Trust me, girl. You do not have long. And neither does Kanin.”

He strode away with his guards, leaving me to ponder that ominous statement and hope he was just making empty threats.

Zeke stepped close and hesitantly put his hands on my waist, watching me intently. “Did you find Kanin?” he asked, drawing me against him. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah.” I put my hands on his chest, splaying my fingers, feeling his heart beat under my palm. Funny how such a simple thing like a heartbeat could fascinate me now that I didn’t have one. Or maybe it was just Zeke’s heart that I was fascinated with. “I think he’s going to be fine.”

His hand rose to brush the hair off my shoulder, fingers gently skimming the dried blood on my neck. My stomach danced, even though the Hunger stirred at the contact, like a sleepy, sated beast. “I was worried about you,” he whispered.

“What? Why?” I tried to ignore my fluttering insides, the fingers tracing soft patterns against my skin. “This is nothing, Zeke. Hell, I’ve been shot, stabbed, staked, bludgeoned, cut open and thrown out a window. Super vampire healing, remember? A couple little bite marks aren’t going to slow me down.”

“It’s not the physical scars that are the most painful,” Zeke said. “I know you can take care of yourself, probably better than anyone. Certainly better than me.” He smiled a little, reminding me of how handsome he was when he smiled. How he could make my cold heart stutter when he did that. “But I know you, Allie. Even if Kanin was Lost, like Salazar said, you wouldn’t have given up on him. You would have kept trying to save him, whether he could be saved or not. It’s just how you are.”

Since when?
I thought, giving him a dubious look. He chuckled.

“You know it’s true.” He brushed a thumb across my cheek, his gaze intense. “I didn’t see Jackal down there, risking his life. Just you.” His voice went low and soft, tinted with a little regret. “I’d forgotten how incredible you really are.”

The Hunger stirred again, and I tensed.
Getting too close, Allison. It doesn’t matter what Zeke thinks of you—you’re still a vampire and he’s still human. This won’t end well, and you’re not helping either of you.

“Speaking of which, where is Jackal?” I said, pulling back. Zeke let me go, looking disappointed but resigned. “I should tell him what happened—not that he cares, but he should at least know that Kanin is safe.”

I also wanted to tell them both what I had discovered in that cold hospital room, the horrible truth about what Sarren had really unleashed. I remembered the dying vampire, the flesh slowly rotting away as it stared at me, pleading and hopeless, and felt ill. The Prince was right. Bargain or no, we had to find Sarren, force a cure from him. Before this new virus wiped out both our races.

First things first, though, and that was Kanin’s recovery.

“Last I saw him,” Zeke said, “he went upstairs with a few other vampires. They were having some sort of gathering, I think. I’m not really sure, I didn’t want to stick around. A couple were starting to stare at me like I was the main course.”

I bristled at the thought of Zeke in a crowded room of vampires, all eyeing him hungrily. He didn’t have any weapons on him now and would make an easy target. Just another human to be fed upon and discarded.

“Come on,” I told him, starting down the hall. “Let’s go see if we can find the lazy bastard. We’re here to do something, not sit around sipping blood from wineglasses and cozying up to the vamps of the Inner Court.”

We wandered the many hallways and rooms for a while, searching for the raider king. The tower was like a maze of sterile tile floors and glass windows and, after a while, all the rooms began to look the same. We avoided the elevator and took the stairs between floors, passing well-dressed humans and even better dressed vampires on their way to whatever vampirey business took place around here. Many of the vamps, seeing me in my long black coat and scruffy boots, regarded me with disdain, like I was a mongrel dog come in off the streets. I ignored them, unless their attention shifted to Zeke. Then I would give them a hard stare and the hint of a curled lip, and they would either smirk or stare coldly back before continuing on.

“I wish I had my knife,” Zeke muttered as we ducked into another stairwell, continuing toward the top. His voice echoed hollowly in the dark passageway. “Or a stake. Or something to defend myself with. Now I know what a rabbit feels every time a wolf passes by.” He rubbed his arm, frowning. “I wonder how the humans working here can stand it.”

“I’ll make sure Salazar gives you back your weapons when we head out,” I told him, stepping into yet another identical hallway. “Until then, you probably don’t want to draw a lot of attention to yourself.”

“Yeah.” He stabbed his fingers through his hair, looking up and down the empty corridor. “It’s just frustrating. I know I’m deadweight right now. If anything happens, I won’t be much use.”

“You are
not
deadweight.” Anyone who could face down Sarren with nothing but a crossbow and still come out of it alive was anything but useless.

He just smiled grimly.

I was about to protest again when a strange noise began to filter down the hall, making me blink and cock my head. It was faint, melodic and unlike anything I’d ever heard. I couldn’t even describe it. The closest thing I could think of was someone using a pipe to bang a tune on another pipe, but that was just
noise.
This was haunting and eerie and full of emotion and sound, like sadness or longing given voice.

Unable to resist, I followed the strange tune down the corridor, past a pair of open doors, and into some kind of gathering place. This room was carpeted in red, with plush black couches and chairs surrounding low tables, and a glass wall showing the ruined cityscape beyond.

Vampires lounged in corners or on couches, looking elegant and bored, their pale skin a stark contrast to the redand-black furniture. Uniformed humans slipped among them, carrying trays of wineglasses—blood, of course—and whisking away the empty cups. On the right, a black marble counter dominated the wall, with a couple vampires seated at the bar, a weary-faced human behind it. I frowned when I saw none other than Jackal seated at one of the stools, glass in hand, talking to a lithe vampire woman with long blond hair. But I wasn’t focused on him at this point; my attention was on the large object sitting in the far corner.

The one making the strange, haunting noise. A human sat in front of it, his hands moving over a black-and-white shelf set into the dark, polished wood. I stared, entranced. The sounds it was making, the eerie cacophony of emotion, pulled at my insides and made my throat feel tight. I closed my eyes, letting the sound flow through me, forgetting everything for the moment.

I heard Zeke’s footsteps behind me, felt him gazing over my shoulder at the device making the strange, terrible, beautiful sounds.

“A piano,” he said, his voice full of awe. “I haven’t seen one since I was a kid. The old church used to have one, very out of tune, I remember. Of course, me banging on it every week probably didn’t help.”

“A piano?” I opened my eyes as I scoured my memory for the word, finding vague, half-forgotten stories. “This… is music?”

Zeke turned to me, blinking. “You’ve never heard music before?” He sounded stunned.

I shook my head, unable to tear my gaze from the strange instrument. The Fringe was full of ugly noises: screams, shouting, cries of terror and anger and pain. My mother used to hum to me when I was very little, and I used to think her voice was the most beautiful sound in the world. I had never heard anything…like this.

“Oh, Allie,” Zeke whispered, and stepped up beside me. “Come here a second.”

Taking my hand, he drew me aside, to the back of the room where the shadows were the thickest, away from the vampires near the bar. I gave a puzzled frown, tensing, as he put my hands on his shoulders and drew me close, wrapping an arm around my waist.

“What are we doing?”

He smiled sadly and put a hand over mine, his eyes asking me to trust him. “Just follow my lead,” he murmured, and began swaying back and forth, a slow, easy rhythm.

I resisted a moment, unsure of what to do. Gradually, though, I began to feel what he was doing, moving in time to the…music, and started to follow. It was strange, this slow, unhurried motion, our bodies mirroring each other as we swayed and circled, but somehow it felt right. We didn’t stray from that corner, remaining in the shadows, but Zeke pulled me against him and I closed my eyes, and for just a few heartbeats, with the music and darkness swirling around us, we were lost in our own world.

“I missed you, you know,” Zeke murmured, bending his head to mine. I clenched my fingers in his shirt and listened to his pounding heart. “The whole time I was in Eden, I couldn’t stop thinking of you. When I woke up and they told me you had gone…” He shook his head, and his heartbeat sped up. “I wanted to come after you right then, but I knew I had to take care of the others, that they were my first, my most important, responsibility. And I did. They’re safe, every single one of them, even though I had to let them go.”

“Let them go?”

He swallowed hard, and his grip on me tightened. “Caleb, Matthew and Bethany were adopted by a great couple who always wanted kids. They have chickens and cats and goats, and everything they could ever want. Jake actually married one of the nurses at the checkpoint clinic, and Silas and Teresa moved into a little cottage by the lake’s edge. They’re happy. They’re finally home.” His eyes glimmered, even as he gave a faint smile. “They don’t need me anymore.”