Nightwalker

Twenty-Eight

The silence was overwhelming. After the heavy pound of footsteps, clang of steel, and screams of pain, the quiet was suffocating. Even Sadira’s thoughts were now hushed. I could still feel her in the room, but there was only a muffled confusion. Did she know what I had done? I hated the naturi with every fiber of my being, but had I known I was capable of such utter destruction, I would never have committed the atrocity. Taking a life is one thing. The body ceases, but something of the creature still lives on somewhere. I had stopped that, done something I didn’t think possible.

But how? It didn’t make sense. I had never done such a thing before. Even at my peak, I should have been able to only flambé the occupants of the room, if even that. There were so many, and I was exhausted.

Something happened when I touched Danaus. Not only had I been able to sense them, which is unheard of among nightwalkers, but I could also destroy their souls.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and turned my head to the right to look at Danaus. The ebony-haired hunter sat on the floor beside me, his body hunched over. His head was bowed, leaving his face hidden behind a curtain of long dark locks. He had been affected as much as I, his breath still ragged and uneven. When he finally looked over at me, I saw my horror mirrored in his blue eyes.

Danaus reached out to touch my arm, but I lurched across the floor, pushing away from him. “Don’t touch me!” I shrieked. I cringed, nearly curling into a ball as a fresh wave of pain washed through my body. It was blinding, but my fear of what had happened was greater. I know it didn’t make much sense. I had crawled all over the man on more than one occasion and nothing had happened, but the memory and pain were still too fresh.

“Mira?” Sadira said, her voice a fragile shade of its normal strength.

“They’re gone.” My words had been reduced to a pathetic whimper. The raw ache was starting to subside at last and my thoughts were coming together in a more logical fashion. I lifted my head and reluctantly gazed around the room. It was a disaster, something from a nightmare, with body parts strewn haphazardly around the small area. But to me, the most garish of these grisly sights were the bodies of those I’d destroyed. After their souls were incinerated, their bodies had been reduced to gray and white ash. Most had collapsed into large heaps, but a few still stood like thin, dirty snowmen. Because of me, the island was dotted with dirty snowmen, empty shells waiting for a breeze.

“Then it’s done,” Sadira said. She was sounding strong, more sure of herself. “The triad has been reformed.”

“So you believe me now,” I said, trying to force a smile on my lips. But it fell short. What I really wanted was to vomit. My stomach twisted in a desperate dance to purge itself of the violence I had been responsible for, but I’d lost too much blood during the past couple nights.

“No!” Jabari roared, his angry voice an explosion in the silent room. “It can’t be him.”

“Him?” My head jerked up to look from Jabari to Sadira, but both of them were ignoring me.

“He’s not even one of our kind,” Jabari declared.

“Apparently that does not matter,” Sadira said matter-of-factly. “You felt the power in this room as much as I did.”

“No!”

“You’d pick Danaus over me to be in the triad?” I demanded. While I was never one to discriminate according to a person’s race, there was something that irked me about asking Danaus—whatever it is that he was—to be in an all-vampire triad of power. Particularly after he’d spent so much time killing us.

Unfortunately, it might not have been the wisest decision to call attention to myself, considering that I could barely remain in an upright position. I wanted to lie down, but the pools of cooling naturi blood and assortment of body parts made the idea unappealing.

“You’re still blind to the truth?” Jabari asked incredulously. He walked over to me, his face twisted with rage. “You can never be a part of the triad, no matter how old you become or how strong you grow.” Kneeling down so he could look me in the eye, he sneered. “You are just a weapon, nothing more than a sword or a gun, a tool. Your true power is in how another can use you.”

“No,” I croaked, but my mind was already turning over the idea. The voice in my head had been a command and I obeyed. I had no choice, couldn’t have stopped what happened no matter how hard I tried.

“The triad focuses its power in you. We used you like a key to lock the door between this world and the naturi,” Jabari explained.

“If I was so important to what happened, why can’t I remember that night?” I asked through clenched teeth. The thought of being controlled by another twisted in my chest, numbing the pain still throbbing in my body. It seemed that from the moment I took my first gasping breath on this earth, I’d struggled for my independence, my ability to control my own fate.

“To protect you.”

A snort of disbelief escaped me as I narrowed my eyes at my old friend and guardian. “I’m beginning to think that nothing you’ve ever done for me was for my benefit.”

Jabari smiled at me, and it was unlike any other I had ever seen cross his face. It was like a mask had finally been lifted, one I hadn’t even realized I’d been staring at for the past five hundred years. I had seen him smile in pleasure and in hatred, but now he seemed formed of ice, cold and unyielding. He put a finger under my chin and titled my head up. I tried to jerk my head away but I found that I couldn’t. The leak of power oozing from him through his finger into my skin was slight, but it was enough to cause my already sore muscles to tense. There was a new presence in my head claiming dominion, but he had yet to speak or command me. For now, he was just staking his claim, proving he had control over me.

“You can’t remember because we didn’t want you to remember,” Jabari stated.

“We?”

“The Coven. We needed to know who could control you. You can be quite an effective weapon.”

I gritted my teeth and tried again to move my head away from his touch, and again I couldn’t, which made his smile widen.

“Sadira can control you,” Jabari continued. “Tabor could, and so can I. Surprisingly, a couple of Tabor’s children could as well, so we naturally assumed that it was a matter of finding the proper bloodlines.”

“There were others?” A new horror dug its claws into my flesh. There were no memories to drag up, but I could easily imagine the scene: me playing the puppet for the amusement of the Coven and its lackeys.

“A few. We ran some experiments. Unfortunately, most of those we found who could control you had to be destroyed. We couldn’t let our little secret out. We also had to make sure you didn’t know. There would always be the chance of someone reading your mind and discovering your unique ability.”

“So I’ve been allowed to live this long so the Coven could pull my leash at any moment,” I said. Something flashed in Jabari’s eyes for half a second, a random thought I wasn’t supposed to know. “What?” I snapped. “Something about the Coven?” I watched him as his expression hardened, and I smiled back at him. “Not everyone can do it,” I slowly said. “Not everyone on the Coven can control me.” My smile widened and his expression went purposefully blank. I was right. “That must be an ugly sticking point for someone.” My mind quickly rifled through the other members of the Coven; Macaire and Elizabeth. Tabor, my other leash holder, was gone. Could I have been the reason for his final demise?

“You’re very lucky to have survived so long,” Jabari said. “Wisely, you chose to fulfill the requests of the Coven, giving you a purpose and the illusion that you would obey our wishes.”

“All the Coven asked of me was to keep the peace and protect our secret. Not an entirely unreasonable request,” I replied, with a slight shrug that made me instantly wish I hadn’t moved my hurt shoulder.

“And now we have this problem,” Jabari growled, his eyes sliding over to Danaus, who was closely watching the exchange. The hunter pushed to his feet, wincing at the movement, but at least he was standing. I still wasn’t sure I could.

“We naturally assumed that you could only be controlled by your own kind,” Jabari continued. “That’s not good, my desert flower; particularly since there are questions about your loyalty.”

“There are few who have done anything to earn my loyalty,” I replied, causing him to frown. I liked it better than his smile at the moment. “But it doesn’t matter. You will only let me live until you find a way to create another like me.”

“If you live that long,” Jabari said, moving his finger from beneath my chin. If I still breathed, I think I would have sighed with relief. The Ancient stood before me, staring down as if weighing something. “The naturi know you are the key to stopping them. Enough of them survived Machu Picchu to know that you were the one who sealed the door. You were right. They were trying to kill you in Aswan, not me. I believe they were also trying to kill you in London, but they killed Tabor’s child instead. You have always been their target.”

“If I’m so damned important, why send me to protect Sadira? Why not send someone else?”

“We needed bait.”

“Bait?”

“To draw out Rowe. We knew he would come after you again. The chance to kill you is too much of a temptation.”

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the knot of tears that had grown in the back of my throat. It seemed I was becoming everyone’s favorite target. “And killing Rowe would end this? It would stop the naturi?” My voice trembled as I fought for control of my emotions.

“Rowe is the last known leader of the naturi,” Danaus volunteered.

My head snapped up to look at him, meeting his glittering blue eyes as he watched me. “You used me too,” I whispered.

To his credit, he didn’t look away, but continued to hold my horrified gaze. “Yes. When he tried to take you in Aswan, I realized that you must have some other importance that you either were not telling me or didn’t remember. I thought he would make another grab for you.”

“Well, you both missed your chance to end this. Rowe had me in London, threatening to kidnap me,” I said bitterly. “It would have meant destroying me, but I can only guess that you both have other plans for me still.”

“Mira…” Sadira began in a placating voice.

“I’ve heard enough!” I shouted.

“So have I!” mocked a horrible voice from behind me. I didn’t need to look around to see who had spoken. I knew by the sound, the tone, the look of complete shock on the faces of the others who had spoken. With a burst of sheer terror, I tried to lurch forward, but he grabbed me by the hair, wrapping it around his fist. Jerking me backward, he pulled me into the darkness and out of the Compound in less than a heartbeat. Rowe had finally caught me.