Wait for Dusk

Chapter Twenty-One

Danaus stood close before me, his breathing heavy from the fight. His warm energy danced around us, beating back the cold wind, which seemed to be growing quieter now that Rowe had vacated the immediate area. I stood still, fighting the swell of emotions that threatened to swamp me. Doubt ate at me. I should never have sent Valerio alone to look into the naturi problem. I assumed that with his ability to disappear and reappear, he would be able to easily escape any situation. I hadn’t considered that he would be more vulnerable to a sneak attack since he couldn’t sense his enemy. Of course, I’d thought it was impossible to sneak up on Valerio. He was old and powerful. No one could surprise him.

“It’s not your fault,” Danaus said when I remained silent for too long.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I shouldn’t have sent him alone. I should have ordered Stefan to go along with him.”

“Possibly, but there’s a chance that they both could have been taken,” Danaus conceded. “It’s not as if Stefan’s mind would have been completely focused on the naturi. They would have both been vulnerable.”

“It doesn’t matter any longer,” I muttered, shoving both my hands through my hair to push it out of my face. I grunted as the movement stretched and pulled the still mending wound in my stomach. I glanced up at the sky one last time, gauging the night. “We’re leaving here first thing tomorrow night.”

Danaus’s hand slipped away from my stomach as he took a step back away from me. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re going back to Venice tomorrow. If we’re lucky, we can be headed back to Savannah in less than three nights. This matter here is settled. I’m not playing any of Macaire’s games.”

“We can’t leave.” Danaus stepped in front of me as I shifted to start walking up the path I had come down only a few minutes earlier. “What about Sofia?”

My face twisted in confusion and frustration. “We were sent here to take care of the naturi in Budapest. Unless you’re sensing some that I’m not aware of, there should only be Rowe left. And that naturi has no tie to Budapest. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he followed us back to Venice. I’m his target, not world domination by the naturi.”

“What about Sofia? You said—”

“To hell with Sofia!” I snapped, finally losing my hold on my temper. “She got herself into that mess. Let her get herself out. It’s not my job to save every pathetic creature that crosses my path!”

“You said we would help her!”

“I honestly thought we would. I thought in the end that we would have to kill Veyron before we finally got to leave Budapest. I was wrong. We don’t need to kill him. What do I care about how Budapest is being run? So long as the humans aren’t being exposed to our world, it doesn’t matter what Veyron does with the other nightwalkers and the warlocks and the lycans. That’s his business.”

“They tried to kill you! You’re just going to walk away from that?” Danaus prodded, earning a dark smile from me. I took a step closer to him, laying my hand on his chest. Beneath my fingertips I could feel his heart pounding like a tribal drum, urging me on.

“Now you’re just trying to goad me,” I purred. “Isn’t it enough that I risked my neck for the coven to get rid of the naturi in Budapest? You want me to go hunting nightwalkers, warlocks, and whatever other creature that crosses my path. Anything just so long as the by-product is a free Sofia.”

“Yes,” he admitted. I clenched my teeth and attempted to push past him, but the hunter grabbed my arm, holding me in place. “You’re not walking away from me.”

“This conversation is over.”

“It’s not. We have to do something about Sofia. She’s trapped. She’s a poor human that has gotten ensnared by an extremely powerful vampire. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

“Not really,” I said with a shrug.

“Damn it, Mira! We can’t leave her. She doesn’t have any chance of escaping on her own. Why can’t you help her? You went out of your way to save both Tristan and Nicolai.”

“Think about it, Danaus!” I shouted back at him, wrenching my arm free of his grasp. “Was I really risking that much when I rode to their rescue? In both cases, the coven needed to keep me alive. I was in serious danger of getting my ass handed to me by Jabari or Macaire, but they weren’t going to kill me. Veyron doesn’t need me alive. He’s already proven that. Lycans and warlocks have tried to kill me in the span of just a couple nights. I don’t need to go looking for trouble. I’ve got enough.”

“You’re not going to help me?” he asked.

“Damn it!” I growled, balling both of my hands into fists as I fought the urge to light a fire. “Let her go, Danaus. She doesn’t deserve to be saved.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because she asked for what she got! She wanted to be Veyron’s plaything. Why should I risk my neck to save her because she suddenly doesn’t like what she got? What if we free her and she hooks up with another nightwalker in six months? Do you go free her later when she grows bored?”

“She’s a trapped human! She doesn’t deserve to be held prisoner by . . . by . . .”

“By what? A monster?” I supplied.

“Yes,” he hissed.

“So you’ve made your choice.” I crossed my arms over my chest, protecting myself from the words I knew were going to come next. “You’re choosing her because she’s human, regardless of what we’ve got going.”

“What? Why does this have to be about us?”

“Because if this was some guy trapped with Odelia, you wouldn’t care. But Sofia is an attractive young, helpless woman that desperately needs your help and you can’t wait to play the role of the white knight. It’s because you can’t stomach the idea of being attracted to a nightwalker and would rather be with a normal human.”

“That’s—That’s ridiculous!”

“It isn’t! Being with me terrifies you because you know that deep down you are more like me that you care to admit.”

Danaus shook his head at me, taking a step backward. “I won’t discuss this now. I want your help to free Sofia.”

“You also want me to take her back to Savannah with us and serve as her personal protector,” I cried. “I can’t do it.”

“Why? You had no problem taking responsibility for Tristan and Nicolai.”

“Because I won’t risk my life to protect another woman that you are attracted to when I’m the one who cares about you!” I screamed, shaking my hands at him. “I’ve had enough. If you want Sofia free, you fight Veyron for her. I’m leaving for Venice tomorrow night.”

Turning on my heel, I briskly walked back toward the bridge, leaving Danaus behind. A lump grew in my throat and it felt as if a hole had been ripped in my chest bigger than the wound that was healing in my stomach. I wanted Danaus for myself, but I knew deep down that I wasn’t what he wanted, and it was tearing me apart inside.

Roughly brushing aside tears that had gathered in the corners of my eyes, I crossed the bridge back to Buda, where I snagged the first two available young people that crossed my path and fed deeply. I wasn’t much in the mood for hunting, but I needed to replace the blood I had lost, particularly before I returned to Venice. I didn’t know what Macaire’s grand scheme was, and at the moment I didn’t care. I had been dispatched to Budapest to get rid of the naturi problem, and that was all. The naturi were gone, so it was time for me to go home again.

At the hotel, I put out the Do Not Disturb sign and shuffled across the room to the large window that looked down on the city. It was just a couple hours before dawn, and I was trapped in Budapest for the night. Valerio would need to feed and heal for the next few nights before he would be of any use to anyone again. Stefan would need to remain at his side for at least one night to serve as protection and to help him hunt. I had no quick escape to Vienna available to me this morning. And this time I had a dark suspicion that Danaus wouldn’t be coming back to the hotel. I had given him his choice—Sofia or me—and he was going to choose the human.

Leaning my head against the glass, I closed my eyes and tried to organize my thoughts. Danaus was determined to free Sofia, most likely leaving me to deal with Veyron since the hunter would need to focus on getting the little pet to a safe location away from Budapest. After my last run-in with Rowe, I had been hoping to avoid another encounter with Veyron and his flunkies.

The whole thing left me scratching my head. The power structure here was unlike any I had seen in any other domain. Nightwalkers didn’t play well with other powerful creatures. It just wasn’t in our nature. To make matters worse, there wasn’t just one powerful creature in Budapest, but four.

Like the coven. Cursing, I stumbled over to the desk against the far wall and brushed off some debris from the earlier fight. The room was still trashed, and I shuddered to think what Danaus had to do or say to keep things quiet with the hotel management. It wasn’t the first time a hotel room had been destroyed because of my daytime presence, and the incident was usually smoothed over with copious amounts of money.

Grabbing up a piece of blank paper, I wrote down Veyron’s name and circled it. Beside it, I wrote Ferko and Clarion’s names and circled each one individually. Reluctantly, I put down Odelia’s name as well. My experience with her had not been impressive, but according to Ferko, she was the one to actually order Michelle’s death, making her a power player in her own right.

I chewed on my bottom lip as I stared at the four names, and a knot twisted in my gut. It seemed they had formed their own coven here in Budapest, creating a powerful force for anyone to contend with.

But the fact that there were four ruling members in Budapest meant there was always the potential for deadlock, unlike the coven, which had five members. It felt like someone had to be missing. There could be only one lycanthrope pack alpha, so the chance of another lycanthrope was unlikely. Particularly since we had slaughtered most of them and there hadn’t been another half as strong as Ferko. Another warlock was a distinct possibility. Valerio had indicated that Clarion was known to work with someone else, and that other warlock could be serving in the background with the other members of Veyron’s ruling party. If I had to take on Veyron to protect Danaus and his new friend, then I would have to destroy all the members of this group in order to survive. I did not relish the opportunity to go head-to-head against not just one but two warlocks.

“If you had just used the half-breed, you could have killed that irritating naturi with little problem.”

My entire body cringed at the voice. I didn’t need to look up. I could feel Nick’s power slowly filling the room as if he were pushing out all the air and leaving it thick and stuffy. If I still breathed, I would have suffocated in that tiny enclosure. I hung my head down and clenched my eyes shut as if I could will him away, but I knew it didn’t work that way. Nick wasn’t going to leave until he had finally succeeded in pushing me in the direction he thought I should be headed. At the moment, I didn’t care what he wanted.

“I’m done using Danaus,” I said in a low, hard voice, daring him to argue with me.

He chuckled. “You’re not done by a long shot, my dear.”

I slammed my fist against the surface of the desk and twisted around to finally face him. “I’m done! Just leave me alone.”

Nick leaned against the far wall, looking like my last memory of my father, with his simple outfit and floppy hat to protect him against the harsh summer sun. The smile was all wrong, though. There was no warmth or compassion, only evil and malicious glee.

“I can’t, my sweet daughter. We need each other.”

“I don’t need you.”

Nick walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder to keep me from rising when I tried to get out of my chair. “Without me, you will never reach your full potential.”

“I don’t need any more power than I’ve already got,” I snapped.

Nick squeezed my shoulder hard enough to make me cringe and try to shrink away from his touch, but he refused to release me. “And I need you to help me once again reach my full potential. I want to reach the stars again, escape this weakened state.”

I finally jerked out of his touch, but he had me pinned so that I couldn’t get out of my chair. “I don’t care what you want.”

“You will if it means your life,” he said, a grin growing across his horribly beautiful face. “If you’re not going to help me, I will either impregnate you so you will bear me a child that can help me, or I’ll kill you and go to one of my other children for assistance.”

“I will not control Danaus again,” I said stubbornly, daring him to contradict me. When he continued to just stare at me, I finally added, “Besides, I’ve already lost him. He won’t speak to me, won’t look at me. We’re going our separate ways.”

“Yes,” he hissed. “I saw that. Not a good move. You should have just given him what he wanted so you would have his power at your disposal.” Nick paced away from me. Some of the tension drained out of my shoulders as I watched him deep in thought. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders and turned back to me. “No matter. You still have Jabari. Once you return to Venice, you are to concentrate your attention on him.”

“Jabari? Are you insane? He’ll squash me like a bug if he gets even the slightest whiff that he can’t control me any longer, let alone discovers that I can control him.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to control him?” he asked, arching one brow at me. I couldn’t ever recall seeing that particular expression on my father’s face before.

“Of course I would love to control him. He used me for a century. I would love to have the opportunity to force him to take his own medicine. I’m just not strong enough. Jabari will kill me for even trying.”

“Then I suggest that you get it right the first time,” Nick said, and then disappeared, clearly indicating that he would offer me no help whatsoever if I failed to bring Jabari under control when I attempted it.

“Nick!” I shouted, but I got no answer. But then, that’s how things were going at this point. I was alone to clean up this mess I found myself in. Nick had helped me to alienate Danaus, and now I was to stick my head in the lion’s mouth that was Jabari.

Exhausted, I pushed away from the desk and wandered into the bedroom, where I plopped down on the edge of the bed and pulled off my muddy boots. With my legs still hanging over the side, I lay back against the thick comforter and closed my eyes. I wished for the world to fade away, and that we had never come to Budapest.