I gritted my teeth and climbed to my feet. Wet warmth coursed down my side and leg; I didn’t have to look to know I was bleeding heavily. I drew the katana from its sheath and held it in a double-handed grip.
The stranger stopped a dozen feet from where I stood, swaying slightly.
‘We meet again, half-breed,’ he said.
I scrutinized the figure in front of me and blinked to clear blood from my lashes. Hundreds of years of instinct told me this was not a man I dared look away from.
The stranger was tall and lean. Shoulder-length, ash-blond hair gleamed under the shafts of moonlight drifting through the clouds marching across the sky. A scar carved a jagged path from the corner of his right ear to his mouth. Despite the radiance that bathed the clearing, it was too dark to fathom the color of his eyes.
Though I could not recall ever meeting the man before, an eerie sense of recognition coursed through me. I pushed the troubling feeling aside and focused on his feet. I knew they would betray his next move. Already, my vision was starting to blur.
I almost missed the first swing of his blade and lurched back awkwardly. The edge of the sword glinted as it whispered past my face. The flow of blood from my flank doubled.
Our blades met a heartbeat later. Metal clashed as I parried his blows. Mere seconds passed before I found myself forced back a step. Despite the haze of pain and the blood loss that dulled my senses, I recognized his expert swordsmanship.
The stranger continued his relentless attack, a mocking smile dawning on his face. While I could feel rivulets of perspiration trickling down my back, he had barely broken a sweat. His expression grew gleeful when I stumbled. A moment later, I was down on my knees.
I raised the katana and blocked the fatal blow in time. A sharp sting erupted across my shoulder where his blade had cut through flesh.
‘Give up,’ he growled. He pressed down with his sword, teeth gleaming in the gloom as his lips parted in a feral snarl. ‘You know you’re going to die, half-breed!’
I saw Ashely’s chest rise and fall shallowly out of the corner of my eyes. A spasm of guilt and anguish racked my body, almost paralyzing in its intensity. Tears rose in my eyes. He was going to die.
A wave of unrelenting rage surged through me at the thought of the immortals who had brought us to this. My knuckles whitened on the handle of the katana. A grunt left my lips. I rose to my feet.
I was unprepared for the ring of blackness that closed in around me. I shook my head dazedly and blinked in time to catch the glint of the blade.
His sword entered my chest just beneath my right ribcage. I froze, eyes locked on his triumphant grin in dull incomprehension. My gaze finally dropped to the metal embedded in my flesh. He stepped forward.
I gasped and stiffened as scalding pain tore across my body: the sword had gone straight through my chest and out my back. A gush of frothy blood rose in my throat and spilled past my lips, choking my breath.
The stranger raised a booted foot to my thigh and pulled out the sword.
The blade left my body with a sickening wet noise. I stood stock still for a moment before falling to my knees once more. The stranger grabbed the back of my bowed head and leaned down, his lips stopping an inch from my ear.
‘And now,’ he hissed, spit flying from his mouth and striking my bloodied cheek, ‘in these final seconds of your long and abominable life, I shall tell you the name of the man who killed your parents and who is about to end your loathsome existence!’ A crazed grimace washed across the stranger’s face; it flickered distortedly as a veil of darkness clouded my vision. ‘Tell your mother and father that Amos Thorne says hi!’
Moonlight shone on the edge of his sword when he raised it above his head.
I looked past him at the star-filled heavens, a strange sense of calm and acceptance washing over me as I faced my inevitable fate. Though I was grief-stricken at having led Ashely to an untimely death and having been the cause of so many others dying, I knew I had done my utmost to protect the ones I cherished.
My one remaining regret on leaving this world was not having had the chance to get to know Sheila Godard.
The blade pierced my heart in a single savage blow. My vision dimmed. The pain and coldness shrouding my body faded. As the last breath left my lips and I thudded to the forest floor, an image of my parents rose before my open eyes.
Part Two: Resurrection
Chapter Thirteen
For a long and immeasurable stretch of time, there was only darkness and a feeling of absolute weightlessness. I drifted through an endless space, unaware and nonexistent. At some undefined moment during my everlasting sleep, I became conscious of an all-encompassing presence floating around me, cocooning me in warmth. An overpowering feeling of peace washed over me and I found myself crying. Except I was no longer an “I” and I had no body to cry with.
Was this Heaven or was this Hell? Or yet still, was it the anteroom where my final fate awaited me even now?
Then came the voices. They were faint but insistent, echoes in a vast and watery tunnel. Muted words drifted tantalizingly in and out of earshot. Someone spoke quietly in Czech.
Slowly, steadily, I started to perceive my own consciousness. It was dim and ill defined, but nevertheless there. It waxed and waned for an eternity before fading once more. I sank back into dark oblivion and experienced a strange sense of loss.
Something soft and warm glided over my face. I opened my eyes.
A sea of green hovered above me. I blinked and became aware of the tears that clouded my vision. The greenness resolved into a pair of pale, olive-colored irises, flecked with a thousand gold and brown specks. They were framed by thick lashes and long, luxuriant chestnut curls.
‘Hi,’ said Sheila softly. She sat back, the sun cross pendant glinting at the base of her throat.
‘Green,’ I mumbled, the word spilling out before I could stop it.
Her brow knotted in a frown. ‘What?’
‘Your eyes. They’re green.’ My voice sounded weak and raspy even to my own ears.
Her lips curved in a smile that dimpled her cheeks. ‘Yes. They are,’ she acknowledged with a chuckle.
The sound of her laughter prickled my skin with a wave of awareness. Memory returned in a surge of stark images. Coldness gripped me.
‘I died,’ I said bluntly.
Sheila’s expression sobered.
Another frozen still rose in my mind. ‘Ashely!’
I pushed up on my elbows and gasped when pain painted a dozen fiery trails across my body.
There wasn’t an inch of me that did not seem to be hurting.
‘Don’t!’ Sheila placed her hands on my shoulders and lowered me to the bed. ‘You might reopen your wounds.’ A tired smile crossed her face at my stricken expression. ‘Ashely is fine. He’s resting in the next room.’
Unspeakable relief washed over me at her words. Ashely was alive. As was I, incredibly enough. But how? A horde of questions buzzed through my brain.
I looked around and asked the most pressing one. ‘Where are we?’
Sunlight streamed through gauzy white curtains framing a tall window to the left. It illuminated the faded wallpaper covering the walls of a bedroom and sparkled off the crystal chandelier hanging from the elaborately corniced ceiling. Cobwebs populated the distant corners. The furniture was sparse and utilitarian; whatever there was of it looked antique Bohemian, old but in good condition.
‘We’re in a safe house outside Prague,’ said Sheila.
She poured some water from a carafe on the bedside table, lifted my head carefully off the pillow, and brought the glass to my lips. I sipped, then gulped the cold liquid, suddenly conscious of my raging thirst.
‘Not so fast,’ she admonished and took away the glass.
I settled back in the bed and gazed blindly at the ceiling. My mind was clearing. A single thought now occupied it, far ahead of the queue of others.
‘That was my seventeenth death.’ My eyes shifted to Sheila. She looked away, her expression troubled. An uneasy silence fell between us. ‘What happened?’
She rose from the bed and stepped to the window. I stared at her profile and the elegant line of her neck while she spoke.
‘When grandfather and I realized that the Crovirs had found us, we started a fire in the safe house and escaped through the underground passage in the cellar,’ she said quietly. ‘It took us to the woods on the other side of the hill.’ She glanced at me. ‘When we heard the explosion and the shooting, we knew Gabriel had returned with Ashely and you, and that you were engaged in a fight with the Crovirs. We came to look for you afterward.’
I digested this information for a moment. ‘What of Gabriel and the others?’
‘They all made it, but not without sustaining injuries.’ She turned then and stared me straight in the eye, her gaze unflinching. ‘When we found the two of you, Ashely was almost dead. You had no detectable pulse. By the time Bruno returned with a car, you were breathing again.’ She hesitated. ‘You’re absolutely positive that was your seventeenth death?’
‘Yes,’ I replied flatly.
Footsteps sounded outside the room. The door opened to reveal Gabriel Dvorsky.
The Schwatz noble’s eyes widened when he saw that I was awake. ‘You’re up.’
There was a fresh dressing on his forehead and a bandage around his hand. He was favoring his right leg.
‘How long have I been out?’ I pushed back the covers and tried to sit up again. This time, I was successful.
I swung my legs off the bed. A wave of dizziness hit me. I leaned heavily on the edge of the mattress.
That was when I saw the bandages encircling my chest and flanks.
‘Two days,’ said Sheila. ‘You lost a lot of blood.’
I reached for the glass of water with a shaky hand and grimaced when the movement stretched damaged muscles.
Gabriel leaned against the doorjamb and watched me closely. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’ve been better.’ I struggled to mask my anxiety at Sheila’s words. Considering the events of the last week, two days was a long time to lose. ‘Although, technically, I shouldn’t even be here.’
‘True,’ said Gabriel guardedly.
A figure loomed behind him.
Ashely’s left arm was in a sling. The outline of dressings was visible beneath his shirt.
A smile tugged at my lips when I saw the cigarette at the corner of his mouth. He looked a bit pale but seemed his normal self.
‘I heard voices,’ he said with a grin.
Sheila’s eyes narrowed when she saw the cigarette. She crossed the floor and snatched the roll from his lips.
‘I removed a bullet from your chest barely forty-eight hours ago. The least you could do is not smoke!’ she hissed.
Ashely looked unrepentant. ‘You do realize this will only delay my recovery, don’t you?’
‘How, exactly?’ Sheila retorted.
‘By not letting me smoke, you’re causing me undue stress. I’m sure I read somewhere that stress slows down wound healing,’ said Ashely, deadpan.
Sheila rolled her eyes and opened her mouth for what was likely going to be a scathing riposte when movement outside the room interrupted her.
‘What’s going on?’ said Tomas Godard.
The old man seemed to have aged a decade since I last saw him.
‘Your granddaughter’s infringing on my rights,’ Ashely explained.
‘She’s your doctor. You should listen to her,’ said Godard with a distracted expression. His eyes never left my face. ‘Besides, you owe her your life. She gave you blood.’
Ashely’s eyes widened. He stared at Sheila. ‘You did?’
Her cheeks colored.
‘Oh.’ Ashely looked stunned.
Sheila squared her shoulders. ‘Right, all of you leave, now. He needs to rest.’
She shooed the men out of the room and paused on the threshold. ‘There’s a bathroom across the corridor. The clothes in the wardrobe should fit you.’ Her eyes softened. ‘Come down when you’re ready.’
I watched the door close behind her. My skin still burned where she had touched me.
The light outside was fading when I finally made my way along a corridor to the head of a grand staircase. Already, I could feel strength flowing back in my limbs.
The new safe house was a manor. From what I had glimpsed through the window of my bedroom, it was situated on a deserted estate. I stopped on a landing and examined the paintings lining the wood-paneled walls of the entrance hall. It was a deliberate distraction; my mind was not quite ready to deal with the overwhelming subject of having survived my seventeenth death.
I crossed the foyer at the bottom of the stairs and followed the sound of voices down a dim passage to a kitchen at the back of the house. There was a lull in the conversation when I appeared in the doorway.
Ashely, Gabriel Dvorsky, and the Godards sat at an old, scarred walnut table dominating an extensive flagstone floor. A fire crackled in the hearth next to them, the flames casting golden, flickering light across the whitewashed walls.
Ashely drew out the chair next to him.
‘Where are Bruno and Anatole?’ I said as I took the seat.
‘They’re out getting provisions,’ said Gabriel.
An awkward hush followed.
I sighed. ‘So, are we going to get to the point or are we going to indulge in some small talk first?’
Gabriel leaned back in his chair. Ashely unearthed a cigarette from somewhere and struck a match lazily. Sheila turned and gave him a dark look.
A low chuckle broke the silence. ‘You always were impatient, even as a child,’ said Tomas Godard. ‘In that respect at least, you resemble your mother.’
I froze, shock coursing through me as I stared at the blue eyes so alike to mine. The strong feeling of foreboding that had lingered at the back of my mind since I first met Tomas Godard suddenly crystallized into a cold certainty. I knew this man. Though I could not recall his features, I felt that I had known him for a long, long time.
‘Who are you?’ I said in a low voice, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Godard’s shoulders sagged. He suddenly looked incredibly old. ‘I am your grandfather.’
Sheila gasped. ‘What?’
Though I sensed the sudden tension running through him, Ashely remained silent at my side.
Gabriel watched me wordlessly. From the lack of surprise on the Schwatz noble’s face, it was evident he knew the facts of the matter.
I sat still for some time, Godard’s words ringing in my ears. Although my whole being resonated from his revelation, I was convinced that he spoke the truth.
‘Your mother, Catarine, was my eldest daughter,’ said Godard. He looked at his granddaughter. ‘Sheila’s mother, Lily, was my youngest child.’
‘How—’ Sheila started, her expression troubled. She stopped, visibly struggling for words. ‘Why have you never spoken of this before? I thought mother was an only child!’ She could not mask the accusing tone in her voice.
A sad light appeared in Godard’s eyes. ‘I’ve kept this secret for so long, I’m afraid that it has become a force of habit over the years.’ He reached out and touched her face with gentle fingers. ‘Besides, the knowledge would only have brought you pain.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sheila’s voice rose. Anger and grief darkened her irises to a cloudy sea green. ‘In what way would knowing that I had—’ she glanced at me, ‘a family have hurt me?’
Silence followed her tormented words.
My hands fisted under the table. ‘I take it she doesn’t know about the half-breed thing?’ I said bitterly. I was surprised at the anger surging through me.
A pained expression washed across Tomas Godard’s face.
Gabriel frowned. ‘We don’t like to use that term.’
?
??Why not?’ I retorted. This time, I was unable to hide the fury in my voice. Ashely laid a hand on my arm. ‘After all, it’s the reason my parents were murdered and I’ve been hunted all my life! Why be coy about it?’
‘I don’t understand,’ whispered Sheila. She stared from me to her grandfather, her face deathly pale.
Tomas Godard closed his eyes briefly. ‘Five hundred years ago, well after the last days of the Red Death, Catarine fell in love with a highborn Crovir noble. They met at one of the balls organized jointly by the immortal societies to foster kinship between our two races following the end of the war.’ He glanced at Gabriel with a troubled expression. ‘That noble’s name was Balthazar Thorne.’
I flinched. ‘My father’s name was Slovansky.’
Godard shook his head. ‘Slovansky was the name your parents adopted when they went into exile.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘Despite my protests, Catarine and Balthazar married secretly in the year following their first meeting. As immortals, they recognized their destined carpentermate in each other and were determined to never be apart from that time forth. You were born forty years later, in 1560, in Prague. When the immortal societies found out about your existence, a warrant was issued for your capture and execution.’ He turned to Sheila. ‘You know of the old law that prohibits the union between a Crovir and a Schwatz?’
Sheila nodded. ‘I’ve always thought it an archaic rule,’ she said stiffly. ‘The only function it appears to serve is to separate our two societies further.’
A sad smile crossed Godard’s face at her words. ‘Yes, I thought so too, from that time onward.’
His gaze shifted to Gabriel again. The latter was frowning at the table.
‘With both the Crovir and Schwatz Hunters after them, Catarine and Balthazar had no choice but to go into hiding,’ Godard continued. ‘They fled to the Carpathian Mountains. Nine years passed and they managed to stay out of sight. On their tenth year in hiding, the Hunters finally found them. By the time Gabriel told me they were on their trail again, it was too late. When we got there, Catarine and Balthazar were already dead.’