“How?”
He wouldn’t have any teeth left, she decided when his teeth grated together louder. “He’s the one who killed me.”
Tempest’s mouth dropped. By the time this man was done with his revelations, her jaw was going to be dislocated, she realized. She finally gave into the urge to sit and slid down the rock wall to the cave floor where she began to rub her throbbing temples. “All I want is to find some help for the children,” she muttered.
“And you have.”
She lifted her head to glare across the fire at him. “No, I’ve found myself mixed up in some strange vendetta you have against one of the asses who invaded my town. The children need help, not an ego contest.”
“It’s not an ego contest, and the children will be helped.”
Tempest released a small snort and ran her fingers through her hair. “I may have never left my valley before, but I know how it works outside of our town. We village vampires are all expendable.”
His muscles rippled as he shifted his position. “I’m a child of the forest. The leader of the human rebels was my father. We were once the lowest of the low; you are not expendable to me.”
She continued to rub at her temples as she contemplated his words. “The two of us won’t be enough against all of the vampires in my town.”
“I’m not sending my brother-in-law and sister into something without checking it out for myself first. They’re the king and queen, and must be protected. Aria can often make that difficult to do, and I’m not going to put her at risk. I believe what you are telling me. I will do whatever we can to save them, but if we go to Aria and Braith now, to retrieve more help, we could be sending them into a bloodbath, or your town could be gone by the time we return.”
Her soul shrank away from that thought; she couldn’t have come this far only to fail. She nodded, but she didn’t know what to make of him or this situation. It was so strange to hear someone talk so openly and knowingly of the queen. It had actually caused a little smile to tug at the corners of his mouth when seconds before he’d looked like he could tear the mountains down with his bare hands in order to get at Kane. She still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced he was right about any of this, but his love for his sister was obvious.
Rubbing at her arms, she crept closer to the fire in an attempt to ease some of the chill seeping through her. “I’d heard the queen was human, a rebel,” she murmured.
“She was.” He moved away from the wall and walked toward the front of the cave. They were mostly sheltered from the storm in here, but a breeze ruffled his hair away from his face as he moved.
“The peace after the war was nice.” His eyes had returned to their crystalline blue color when he turned to look at her. “Whatever they’re trying to do is going to threaten that, and their numbers are growing.”
“Their followers won’t have much loyalty if they feel they’re being forced to join or die. Vampires and humans alike only want to be treated fairly,” he replied.
“The ones who came into our house are exceptionally loyal,” she muttered. “There’s something going on there, more than what I saw. I don’t know who that woman was, but they’re listening to her, they’re following her, and they’re turning on the ones who don’t. Her speech had them all cheering even as she burned their neighbors and friends.”
He rubbed at his beard as he considered this. “They left the children in the orphanage?”
Something about his question struck her as odd; did he somehow know something she didn’t? “Where else would they put them?”
“I have an idea, but I’d like to hear your answer first.”
Tempest’s fingers dug into her now sweaty palms. “For now. I don’t know what they plan to do with them though. None of them are old enough to enter into a battle, or strong enough. I suppose they could fight, but they’d never survive it. No children arrived with them in the town. They could have been left in another orphanage or with their parents, but I don’t think they would have left survivors behind.”
He reminded her of water rippling over rocks as he moved with grace and yet with single minded purpose across the cave to the other side before turning to face her again. “And what makes you think that?” he asked.
“They’re trying to keep their existence a secret. At least for now.”
The haunted look in his eyes caused the sweat on her palms to feel like ice. “I think I know what they’re doing with the other vampires and the children.”
“What?” she forced herself to ask.
“I came across the town of Chester about thirty miles back.” The chill in her bones became a bone-wracking shake as he told her about the horrors he’d discovered in that town. She couldn’t imagine anything so appalling. Those poor vampires, the children. “It’s why I found this cave and decided to stock it with some supplies in case it became necessary as an emergency base,” he finished.
“Those poor children,” she murmured and tried not to shed the tears forming in her eyes as she thought about the ones she’d left behind. Maybe I should have stayed. No, she knew she’d done the right thing; they would have all died if she’d stayed. Now they still had a chance of survival, and that chance had gotten bigger when this man pulled her out of the storm. “Where did everyone else from the town go?” she croaked out past the lump in her throat.
“I would say they’re now part of the troop that came into your town.”
Tempest recoiled as the full enormity of what he’d revealed hit her. What happened in Chester is exactly what they planned to do to her town. She’d never been sick in her life, but now she doubled over so her forehead nearly touched the ground. Sweat beaded her brow as she strained to maintain control over herself.
She forced herself up away from the rock floor. The walls of the cave blurred through the water filling her eyes. “I should have taken them with me. I have to go back.”
“We will,” he assured her.
She brushed aside the strands of hair that fell forward when she rose to her feet. The horse lifted its head to look at her as she paced restlessly toward the front of the cave. A wall of white continued to fall outside, making it impossible for her to see more than five feet out the entrance. She didn’t turn at the sound of his step beside her.
“I never should have left them behind,” she said.
“You didn’t have a choice.” His hand falling lightly on her arm caused her eyes to widen. He obviously loved his sister, but she didn’t take him to be a sympathetic or caring man. He’d been pitiless and aloof since she’d awoken; however, his hand on her arm was far from cold. Despite the ice in her bones, his touch heated her flesh far more than the cloak she wore.
He gave her arm a small squeeze. “You would have been locked away somewhere and left behind to become what those vampires I found were. We will get to them.”
“What can the two of us possibly do?” she whispered.
“We may not be able to do anything against numerous troops, other than try to learn more, but those vampires and most likely the children will still be alive when the invaders pull out of that town. We’ll be able to get to them then.” She turned to stare out at the storm again. “You run the orphanage?”
“No, I grew up there. I still work there and help with the children, but I was only filling in for Laverne, the woman who does run it, while she is out of town. It’s a much happier and better place to live since the new king took over. When I grew up there it was a miserable, unhappy place to be.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“I don’t know,” she replied while continuing to watch the snow swirling beyond the cave. The effect was almost dizzying as it whipped and danced across the sky. “I was a newborn when I was left on the doorstep of the orphanage, in the middle of a blizzard much like this one, with nothing more than a blanket. That was twenty years ago. They didn’t even bother to leave a name for me when they left me. The woman who ran the place at the time named me Tempest beca
use of the storm that night.”
“I see.” He squeezed her arm again before releasing her.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Many times it’s the way of the vampire world, or at least the world outside of the aristocrats and royalty.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“And what of your parents?”
“My mother was murdered by vampires when I was four. My father was killed during the battle against the old king. My older brother, Daniel, has taken what would have been my father’s place as a representative on The Council the new king has established.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged as he stared out at the swirling snow. “That’s life. People come and go from it.”
“I suppose. You really must have hated vampires.”
“I did and some of them I still do, especially ones like those who have invaded your town and most likely destroyed the town of Chester. Humans have a streak for cruelty within them too. I’ve seen some hideous things while living in the woods, and there were humans who turned against their own kind when King Atticus took power. Vampires have become my family, my best friends, and will one day be my nieces and nephews.”
“And your children?”
“Probably not.”
Before she could question him further, he turned and walked away from her. She remained where she was, standing by the doorway and staring out at the snow. She had to return to Badwin, to the children, but there was no way they were going to be able to find their way back in this blizzard.
***
Tempest sat near the fire, the flames dancing across her face as she watched William walk toward the front of the cave and back again. His pacing had intensified while the storm continued endlessly on through the night and into the next day. Against his thigh, the small crossbow he had strapped to him bounced a little with every step he took. For a vampire, he was far more comfortable around weapons that could kill him than she ever would have been.
“How old are you?” she inquired.
“Nineteen,” he replied. “Though most times I feel far older.”
He looked older. She would have guessed at least twenty-five, maybe twenty-seven or eight. “Don’t we all,” she replied with a smile. He finally stopped pacing to look at her. “You’ve seen a lot in such a short time.”
“I have.”
“And you survived the change despite the odds.”
“It’s believed there is vampire DNA in our line.”
“Really?” She was unable to keep the disbelief from her voice. “Amazing. Who would have thought the leader of the rebels would be descended from the very thing they fought so hard against.”
“It was a surprise to us as well.”
“What was it like, the battle that overthrew the old king?”
His eyes were distant. For a minute she didn’t think he would answer, then he walked to the other side of the fire and settled onto the ground across from her.
- CHAPTER 12 -
William drew up his knee and draped his arm across it. Her deep brown eyes were questioning as she watched him; the brown lashes surrounding them swept toward her dark blonde eyebrows. She was older than he was, yet she looked younger, far more innocent and unknowing of the atrocities of the world. Atrocities he’d encountered time and again in his relatively short life. How did he tell her about the endless nightmares that woke him every night and haunted him during the day?
He didn’t know how and right now, he didn’t feel like talking about it.
“What was it like to grow up in your village?” he inquired instead.
She tilted her head to the side, pursing her mouth as she studied him. “Quiet, often lonely.” Her soft voice carried over the crackling of the fire. He may not have been able to hear her clearly as a human, but he heard her clearly now. “Most of the vampires running the home while I was growing up were far from kind. I learned early to stay out of the way.
“I spent a lot of time exploring the surrounding mountains and caves. When I was growing up, we learned to fend for ourselves, and as we got older, we helped to take care of the younger children amongst us. It wasn’t often we got word of the outside world or had visitors. It was probably three months before we’d learned there had been a war, that it was over, and things were to change.”
“What did you think of that?” he asked.
“It was a good thing,” she said. “But it didn’t much change things for me. There were blood slaves in our town, but I was too poor to have ever owned one. As children, we learned to rely on animal blood, and the blood of those who had done something wrong and were forced to donate. I never really considered the life of the humans. I was too busy getting through my own days and trying to keep the younger ones alive.”
“Understandable.”
“And what was life like in the forest, amongst the rebels?”
His fingers tapped against his shin while he contemplated her question. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as his thoughts turned to those days that in some ways had been far simpler and far more brutal. “A battle for survival, freeing, fun, deadly.”
“What an odd combination.”
He released a small snort of laughter. “So was being a rebel. Every day we worried we would be discovered, but we spent many of those days irritating vampires, setting traps, hunting for food, and just being with each other. We were a large, extended family.”
“And now?”
“That family has grown to include people and vampires I never thought it would, and it’s growing more every day. Jack was recently married.”
“Who is Jack?”
“You may know him as Jericho, the youngest brother of the king.”
“Oh,” her rosebud mouth parted. “It’s so weird to hear someone talk of them so freely and with so much knowledge.”
“I imagine it is; I know I never thought I’d know them the way I do.”
“What was the war like?”
He should have known she wouldn’t so easily let her question go. Of course, she was curious about what had happened; he imagined many were. Looking away from her, his eyes focused on the shadows dancing across the wall. His hand instinctively grasped his thigh, where the scar from the spear that had punctured him during the war still marred his flesh. The screams that had echoed through the throne room resonated within his head. His own screams amongst those as the spear had pinned him like a bug and nearly crippled him.
“It was war,” he murmured as he rose to his feet once more.
“Was it…? It was awful.”
He glanced back at her as he began to pace again. The damn walls were beginning to grate on his nerves, or maybe it wasn’t the walls but the memories encompassing him that he couldn’t tolerate right now. “All war is. All death is.”
“I’m sorry.”
He rolled his shoulders, stretching his tense back. “Don’t be. The world is a better place because of what happened.”
That knowledge didn’t assuage the screams in his head or erase the cloying scent of blood in his nostrils. So many had fallen, not only at the raid on the palace, but also in Chippman, where he had finally lost his life. His hand ran over the puckered scar on his stomach before falling to his side. So many scars, but most of them were on the inside, invisible to the naked eye.
Walking to the back of the cave, he pulled out another canteen of blood, the last one. They’d gone through it faster than he’d anticipated. He returned to the main room and handed the canteen over to her. “That’s it,” he told her.
She waved it away. “We should probably save it then.”
“The storm will break soon.” He hoped. “Drink.”
“Sometimes they can last for a week or more.”
Ugh, he groaned inwardly, but he could do nothing about the weather. “Then I will go hunting for more. There’s not enough to last us another week; there’s no point in turning it down.”
The pale blue veins in the back
of her hand were clearly visible when she took the canteen from him and unscrewed the cap. His fangs pricked at the sight of those veins; a heavy pressure built within his canines as she tilted it back and took a swallow of blood. The muscles in her throat and neck flexed; his eyes latched onto her throat as she consumed the liquid.
It had been months since he’d been with a woman, not since before he’d died. Between trying to adjust to his new life, what he’d become, and what he was now capable of, he’d had little time for women. And truth be told, he hadn’t known if he could trust himself not to hurt someone in the beginning. Didn’t know what would happen if he allowed himself to relinquish any of the unyielding restraint he’d been keeping himself under over the past five months.
He’d never felt the urge to drink from another vampire before, humans yes, but not a vampire. Desire for her slithered hotly through him and was far more intense than he’d experienced with anyone else before. He knew from Aria that vampires rarely shared blood with each other, but he was new, they were trapped in a cave together, and he was hungry. This was probably one more thing he would have to come to terms with now that he wasn’t human.
Her delicate features were striking, her silvery hair and doe colored eyes enticing. No wonder he was thinking about sinking his teeth and himself into her. Her alluring scent of fresh air and snow tickled his nose. “I always loved the winters, until now,” she murmured before tilting the canteen back to her mouth again.
William took a step away from her to put some distance between them. His mind searched for a way to distract himself from his growing hunger for her. “When we were children Aria, Daniel, and I would often build snowmen and forts in the winter. We’d also make snow angels.”
She lowered the canteen from her mouth and wiped away the blood staining her lips. She held it out to him. He took the half-filled canteen from her and took a gulp before capping it off again. Not much remained, but the last of it was for her.