Twilight Fulfilled (18 page)

Brigit glared at Rhiannon. “Why don't you try being buried alive for a few thousand years, Aunt Rhi? See what it does to your temper, not to mention your sanity. He believed what they wanted him to believe. Just like we did when we raised him.
They're
the enemy. Not Utana.”

“We've all agreed on a plan, Brigit,” J.W. said softly. “We'll go in and get the Chosen out of that place before the DPI makes their move. Before they're expecting us. We'll take them by surprise. If we go rushing back there now, though, before we're ready, we'll blow any chance we have of saving the captives.”

She blinked at her brother. “But he's in pain.”

“He's not our priority.” He said it coldly, without inflection, as if Utana's anguish was not even worth consideration.

“But perhaps he
is
yours,” Rhiannon said, as she came across the room and stood nose to nose with Brigit. The other vampires in the room watched silently as Rhiannon uttered but one word. “Choose.”

“I'll get him away from them. Bring him in. If you talk to him, you'll see—”

“Choose, Brigit.”

“He can help us.”

“We do not want or need any help from that mon
ster. If you bring him within reach of any vampire, I will tear him apart with my own two hands.” Rhiannon paused there, turning away while blinking rapidly, angrily. “And you with him, if you try to stand in the way.” Her voice had thickened, deepened.

“Rhiannon!” Brigit's mother shouted.

“He has murdered our people,” Rhiannon went on. “He intends to murder the rest. You cannot be with him and remain with us, Brigit. And so the time has come, my little rebel, for you to choose. Him? Or us?” She turned away, as if putting Brigit from her life.

Brigit's heart twisted into such a tight, hard knot that she could hardly bear it. Tears of anger and rage welled up in her eyes. Besides her own mother, Rhiannon was the woman she loved most in the world, but she'd turned her back to Brigit now, both literally and figuratively. Brigit looked around the room at every vampire there. No one spoke nor moved to defend her. All of them were waiting to see what choice she would make.

Her eyes met J.W.'s, but he said nothing. Even her own twin, her other half, refused to support her. Blinking back tears, she clenched her teeth, stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “You're wrong about him. About me, too. You're very, very wrong. And I will prove it to you.” She moved to pick up
her jacket and the little backpack she used because she wouldn't be caught dead with an actual purse, then turned to face them again.

No one had moved, but Lucy clutched J.W.'s arm, staring at him so hard that Brigit knew she was talking to him with her mind. Yelling at him, maybe. Her parents were hugging one another, her mother crying softly and thinking at her,
I understand, my love. You have to go see for yourself. I'll be here for you, when you return.

“I will prove it to you,” Brigit said again. “I'll show you that he's good. That he's one of us. But I shouldn't have to. I guess you're just all so used to thinking of me as the bad twin that you can't wrap your narrow minds around the fact that I'm the one who's supposed to save us. Not your saintly J.W. No. The good twin fucked everything up, remember? The prophecy was talking about me—not him. I'm the one who's supposed to fix this. And that's what I'm going to do. But I swear on the dust of the dead, it'll be a cold day in hell before I forgive you for not trusting me.” She looked at her brother. “Any of you.”

And then, without another second's hesitation, she slammed out of the house. Moments later her tires spat gravel and left rubber as she shoved the car into gear and sped away. Hot tears were flooding down her cheeks, and they made her angry.
She clutched the steering wheel with one hand and pounded it with the other. “Dammit, why do I care?”

This was wrong. It was wrong, and so damned unfair. J.W. was the one who'd walked out on his family, denied his vampiric side, tried to live as a mortal for his entire adult life. Not her. She'd stayed; she'd been loyal. She'd embraced her fangs and developed her powers. She'd done the lessons, learned the history, studied at Rhiannon's feet. She was the one who'd stood by them.

Even though they'd condemned her power as evil, warned her not to wield it, made her feel like something less, while elevating J.W. to the status of a Christ figure. And yet, when the chips were down, they'd wanted her to use her unworthy power after all. To kill for them. They'd wanted her to entomb a living man, a beautiful man, the father of their race, for all time. And then had the nerve to turn on her when she'd refused.

“I hate them,” she muttered. “I hate them all.”

Even if Utana were the monster they believed him to be, doing such a thing to him would be wrong. But he wasn't. He
wasn't
. She knew him. Utana was no monster. He was a man, and she loved him.

But even as she drove on, sobbing, she heard herself whisper, “Oh, God, what if I'm wrong?”

 

Midnight. The late-summer hum of insects was more present than the buzz of traffic. It was quiet outside the asylum walls tonight. “Too quiet,” Brigit whispered, and tried to laugh at her use of the clichéd movie line, but she failed to work up even a smile. She was worried.

She crouched in the trees outside the chain-link fence, peering in at the place. She felt Utana's energy and knew he'd been in this very same spot not so long ago.

The hospital seemed harmless, ordinary. Hard to believe the Chosen were all being held inside. She was fairly sure that was where Utana was, too. In that brief blast of agony she'd felt emanating from him, she'd also received a block of other impressions. The unmistakable feeling of a room below ground. A basement. The smell of concrete and paint, and perhaps propane fumes. The antiseptic atmosphere of a hospital. The rippling waves of energy coming from hundreds of humans, flowing down from above. The cold feel of iron at his wrists and ankles. The jangling of chains. The aura of the scar-faced Gravenham-Bail nearby, his smugness, and his feelings of triumph, of victory at hand, of hatred for those he was about to destroy. The thrill of pleasure that notion gave the man sang from his soul like a choir of demons. He was truly evil.

From Utana came feelings of confusion followed by anger, and then a rush of fear like a layer of ice, flash freezing all the rest. Fear…not for himself but for her. And then nothing.

She was going to hurt that DPI bastard. She was going to hurt him bad.

Brigit unzipped her large duffel. Weapons filled it: guns, knives, even a small crossbow. She'd kept the stash in the trunk of her car ever since this insanity began, intending to use it to fight back against the vigilantes who'd decided to destroy the vampire race by burning their homes while they slept by day.

But that, too, had been no more than a DPI brainstorm. Gravenham-Bail himself had instigated that movement, feeding the flames of fear until they blossomed into violence.

She selected a few choice weapons, then zipped the bag again and tucked it beneath a stand of brush, making a mental note of the exact location, should she return here later.

She eyed the chain-link fence, certain it was electrified, then spotted a limb high overhead. Hunkering low, she jumped, sprang high, caught the limb easily. Then she swung like a trapeze artist. Once, twice, each time gaining more momentum, more distance. On the third swing she pulled her knees to her chest and cleared the fence. In a second she'd landed in a low crouch and was staring at the giant of a building.

She blinked in the darkness, looking around, staying low and still. But there was no movement, no indication that she'd been seen. She darted nearer the hospital and began making her way along the side, her back to the brick wall as she moved as silently as she could along the wide bed of white gravel that encircled the place. Here and there a rosebush or shrub blocked her path. She hopped over them rather than step away from the building and expose her silhouette against the night sky. Inch by inch she moved, a silent child of the night.

Just the way Aunt Rhiannon had taught her.

When she reached the front corner, she peered around, then ducked quickly back. Two guards stood, as always, at the front door. She needed them to leave their posts, and, moreover, she needed that door opened for her.

Lowering herself to all fours, she crept around the corner, then crawled toward the door, until only a single shrub stood between her and the guards. She stared at them from behind the branches, homing in on their minds, listening to their thoughts.

They doubled the security tonight,
one guard thought.
That's never happened before. Must be expecting trouble. Wish they'd tell us more. I hate this need-to-know shit.

And the other one:
I should get off early, go home
a few hours before she expects me, see if I can catch her in the act. I know something's going on. I
know
it.

Brigit focused her eyes on the radio attached to the second man's belt. And then on his mind. She'd rarely tried to control the minds of mortals. But she needed to do so now.

It was dark, which meant it was safe to vamp up, bringing out the Undead part of her. Her fangs elongated. Her eyesight sharpened, and the blood-lust was like a hunger pang. But her mental powers were heightened, too. She focused her thoughts.

They're calling you.

Guard number two picked up his radio. It was dead silent, but still, frowning, he listened.

Get inside,
Brigit thought at the men as urgently as she could.
We need you in here ASAP!

“Shit,” said the first. “This must be it.” He drew his sidearm.

The second clipped the radio to his belt, drew his own handgun and then hit the buttons on the security panel and opened the door.

Brigit, still on all fours, sprang over the shrub the way Pandora might have done. She hit the ground on two feet, knees bent, and sprang again, this time landing on the top step, barely managing to grip the door just before it fell closed.

She stood there, her back to the wall, holding the
door open by a hairsbreadth, just enough to keep the locks from engaging, while the guards started to make their way through the building. And then, quick as a heartbeat, she slipped inside.

And heard the click of a hammer being drawn back as the cold steel barrel of a gun was pressed to her head.

“Welcome to St. Dymphna, Brigit. We've been expecting you.”

U
tana roused, but slowly. It felt as if his eyelids had been sealed shut, and his head—by the gods, his head pounded like a band of lilis drums. His knees had sunk down onto the hard, cold floor, his arms still stretched overhead and aching from being held so long in that position. His hands were numb.

And yet none of those things compared with his awareness of Brigit. She was near, and the realization filled him with an instant wave of joy and relief, which was immediately overwhelmed by horror. If she was here, she was in danger.

And even as he realized that, the door to his prison opened and she was brought in. Chained, as he was, at ankles and wrists, men holding her on either side. Utana rose and lunged toward her as the men shoved her inside and she fell to her knees, but his chains brought him up short.

She seemed unharmed, and fury rose from her like steam from a boiling pot as she lifted her head
and turned their way. For the first time Utana saw the blindfold around her eyes.

“Well? Aren't you going to say hello to your boyfriend?” Nashmun said to her.

Brigit looked toward Utana, as if sensing him there. Her nostrils twitched as if she were sniffing the air.

“I am here,” Utana said. “And more sorry than I can tell you that these pigs have you now.”

“We would have had her sooner or later, anyway, Utana,” Nashmun said. “Don't feel too badly. Besides, you're going to be able to make her stay with us a whole lot less unpleasant.”

“No,” Brigit whispered, her head swiveling to follow Nashmun's voice.

The man smiled, a grim, evil smile. “You see? She's figured it out already. But I suppose I'll have to explain it to you, Utana.” He nudged Brigit with the toe of his shoe and leaned closer, as if sharing a secret with her. “He's a little slow, since we had to drug him. You know, to keep him from blowing us all to hell and gone.” Then he shrugged and went on. “Tonight the Chosen are going to begin suffering untold agonies. Their cries will summon the vampires here. And when they arrive, you, Utana, are going to kill them.”

“I have already told you, I will not.”

“Yes, you will. Say it. Say, ‘I'll do whatever you say.'”

“Never.”

Nashmun nodded to one of his henchmen, who had come to join him, standing over Brigit, who was still kneeling on the floor. He drew a blade from his belt, then, bending, clasped her face hard in his hand.

“Leave her!” Utana shouted.

But the blade moved closer. Brigit flinched as its cold steel touched her cheek. Utana surged, yanking uselessly at the chains that held him, even trying yet again to drum up the power from within to blast the bastard into the next life. But it was not to be found. No beam emerged from his eyes. He could only watch in agony as the blade drew a bloody path from high on Brigit's cheekbone all the way to her chin, in a close imitation of the scar Nashmun bore upon his own evil face.

Brigit clenched her jaw, refusing to cry out. But Utana howled his rage. The blade moved away from her. The henchman wiped it against his shirtsleeve, first one side and then the other. And the cut in Brigit's cheek trickled blood, scarlet rivulets running down her beautiful face.

“I will kill you for this!” Utana promised. “You,” he said with a nod at the henchman. “And then you,” he added to Nashmun. “But for you it will be slow.”

“It'll be slow for your mongrel pet here, too, Utana,” Nashmun replied. “Slow and excruciating. Oh, wait, that's a pretty big word for you, isn't it? It means it's going to hurt like hell. And I promise
you, I will make you watch me skin her alive if you do not do exactly what I tell you.”

Utana drew a shuddering breath.

“I'll leave you two to think it over,” Nashmun said. “The night is waning, so we're going to have to wait to begin the fun. It's nearly dawn. But tonight…” He laughed and rubbed his hands together. “Tonight we're going to wipe out every remaining vampire in this country and fulfill my life's work. Nice, huh?”

And with that he jerked his head toward the door. His henchmen left the room, with Nashmun following right behind.

 

Brigit lifted her head, brought her chained hands together and pushed the useless blindfold from her face. She blinked her vision into focus and saw Utana there, chained to the wall. Above him was the sloping glass of the skylights they'd seen from outside, darkened now, and opaque.

She lowered her eyes to the man again, happier to see him than she'd ever been to see anyone in her entire life.

Then she gasped at the sight of the deep, ugly burn on his abdomen, just above the hip bone. The sight of it made her wince in remembered agony. She'd felt that burn.

Lifting her gaze from his side, she met his beau
tiful onyx eyes, and she saw the anguish there. For her. She knew it was all for her.

But despite everything else, her dominant emotion was one of relief. She pulled herself to her feet and ran to him, pressing her body to his, running her manacled hands up and down his chest as she inhaled his scent. She tried to smile, but it hurt her wounded cheek. “I knew you weren't plotting against us with that scar-faced bastard.”

He tried to embrace her, but the chains stopped his progress. “Is there someone who does not know this?”

Raising her head, looking into his eyes, she nodded. “My family. My brother, J.W.—excuse me,
James
.” She poured on the sarcasm. “They all believe you returned here to help Gravenham-Bail plot our destruction.”

“All…except for you.”

She nodded. “All except for me.” Tilting her head to one side, she asked, “But why haven't you blasted them by now? Was Scarface telling the truth about that? They drugged you?”

“I have tried to raise my energy, to send the beam from my eyes to destroy them. They have…done something to my power. Taken it with their…inject-shun.”

“No, Utana. They don't have the know-how to take your power from you, only block it for a while.” She stepped away from him regretfully, looking
him up and down first, almost unable to look anywhere else, she was so glad to see him again. Still, she forced her eyes away and scanned the room around him. She spotted a hypodermic needle on the floor and bent to pick it up, her chains jangling. There were still droplets clinging to the inside. “Is this what they stuck you with?” she asked, holding it up.

He nodded.

“It's a drug. They have all kinds, you know. The DPI has been experimenting on captive vampires for decades. They have a tranquilizer that works to weaken them, to inhibit their powers. I imagine this is some variation of that same drug, only probably a hell of a lot stronger, to make it work on someone as powerful as you.”

“Can it…?”

He was worried that he'd lost his power forever, she realized, and hastened to reassure him that wasn't the case. “It'll wear off. I doubt even
they
know how long that might take.” She glanced at the door. “You can bet your ass they won't take any chances on any of them being in the line of fire when that happens, though. But then again, they can't keep doping you, can they? They need you up and running at full strength if they expect you to blast any vampires tonight.”

He lowered his head, his jaw clenching.

“Don't look like that.” She lifted her chained
hands to touch his face. She couldn't seem to stop touching him. “It's not as if you're really going to do it.”

He couldn't reach her, and she knew he wanted to touch her as badly as she did him. It must be so frustrating. She moved to his side, and immediately he pushed his hand through her hair, stroking it gently. “I cannot stand by and watch them harm you.”

“They
can't
harm me. What the hell are they going to do? Cut me some more? Look, Utana. Look at my face.” She turned her cheek toward him. “It's already healing. It'll be as good as new by the time they come back here.”

“And yet you felt the pain of his blade.”

“I will gladly feel pain if it means my people get to live.”

He tugged her shoulder, so that she moved closer to him, and then she leaned against his body, resting her head on his broad, powerful chest. It rumbled beneath her ears when he spoke again.

“I have thought long on the things you told me, Brigit. About how no man can truly know the minds of the gods. About how the words inscribed in the tablets of old are no more than man's imagination, his attempts to understand that which is not meant for him to understand.”

“I knew you would. You're one of the most intel
ligent men I've ever met. I knew you wouldn't just dismiss my opinions without thinking them over.”

“I know the gods. They are not cruel without cause. I
did
disobey them, but the Anunaki as I know them would never punish an entire race for one man's crime. It makes more sense to believe that man misunderstood what befell me, then recorded his misunderstanding as if it were the truth.”

“Because you were immortal, you could not die,” she said softly. “If someone had come along after that beheading and put your head back on your body, maybe you would have healed and lived again. Like I said before, maybe it was because of what the desert witch did. Maybe burning your body as she did, believing that she was helping you, she actually doomed you to all those years of suffering. And maybe annihilating my people wouldn't make one bit of difference to your state of being, Utana.”

“There is no way to know for certain,” he said. “All the same, my Brigit, and whether your words are true or not, I had decided before I returned to this place that I could not and would not raise my hand against your people again. Regardless of the consequences to me. I told my gods as much.”

She lifted her head from his chest, staring up into his eyes. “Why?”

“Because bringing you pain is more than I can bear to do.”

He lowered his head until his lips brushed across hers. “Never,” he whispered against her mouth, “has a great king been brought so low by one so slight. My heart, little Brigit, you hold in your hands. The mighty heart of an immortal king is more fragile than a butterfly's wings in your grasp. No arrow, no weapon, could pierce its stonelike shell. And yet at your touch, at your kiss, it quivers like a frightened lamb. I find there is nothing I will not do if you only ask it. These things I admit to you with great trepidation.”

“Shut up and kiss me, King.”

His lips pulled into a semblance of a smile, and he lowered his head and kissed her deeply and thoroughly. It killed her that he couldn't wrap his arms around her, but she twisted hers around his neck and kissed him back all the same. Passion rose up like heated mercury, filling her and spilling out. He obviously felt it, too, because he was as aroused as hell, and there was not a damn thing they could do about it.

Breathless, she lay against him and held him.

“I am sorry it has come to this, my love,” he told her.

“Don't be sorry. This—” she said, touching his waist with her manacled hand “—this feeling between us…it's good. It's really,
really
good.” She blinked back tears. “The best thing I've ever known. The best thing in my life.”

“In mine, as well. Now and always.”

Straightening, Brigit said, “All we have to do is figure a way out of this mess.”

“If you can get the Chosens out by day, while the vahmpeers rest, so that there is nothing left to lure them to here, I can take care of the rest, my beautiful Brigit.”

She saw him staring intently across the room and turned to see what he was looking at. A row of massive white tanks lined the far side of the basement room, the boiler sitting a safe distance from them.

What was he thinking?

“How the hell am I going to do that?” she asked.

“With your power.”

She frowned at him, and he smiled softly. “I have learned much from you, Brigit. Now it is time for me to give you some knowledge in exchange. And it is knowledge you have been needing for all of your young life.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Utana.”

“Your power. I began to tell you this before your brother arrived to interrupt me. Your power to… ‘'splode' things,” he said, using her own childhood term and smiling. “You already have it. I gave it back to you when we were still in the palace house with Nashmun.”

She frowned. “No. No, you gave me James's power. The power of healing.”

Utana stared into her eyes, willing her to understand something, she thought, and yet she didn't.

“Are you saying I can use the power of healing to get us out of this mess?”

“I'm saying that you can use your power of ‘'sploding' to get us out of this mess.”

She blinked rapidly. “But I don't have it.”

“Yes, you do. Your power and your brother's are one and the same.”

She felt her eyes widen, her brows rise. A hum filled her head as she felt her reality beginning to tilt on its axis. “Our powers are opposites.”

“They are but opposite ends of the same stick,” he said.

“I don't…I don't understand.”

“Brigit, when you call up that beam of light…of…energy…”

He was taking his time, she knew. Searching for the right words to make her understand what he was trying to tell her.

“When you channel it through your body and out through your eyes, it comes to you from the very same source that your brother's power of healing comes to him. It is no more than your intention and focus that determines what the power can do.”

She actually staggered backward a few steps, blinking almost sightlessly at Utana. “That can't be true.”

“It
is
true, Brigit. You are no more the bad twin
than James is the good one. You never have been. You are both channels for an energy that is neither good nor bad, but simply
is
.”