The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [18]
Aubrey disappeared as I lay on the ground, riding out the pain. If the blade had been human silver, the wound would have healed in moments; instead it took some time for my body even to get control of the pain.
Once it had subsided from blinding to simply unbearable, I sat up slowly, gingerly tracing the wound. The bleeding had already stopped, but the wound did not close fully until after I had fed again. And it left a scar. My skin was already so pale that the scar showed only as a faint pearl-colored mark, but I knew where it was, and I could see it easily.
Somehow, though I knew not how, and someday, though I knew not when, I would avenge that scar and all that it stood for: Alexander’s death, the death of my faith in humankind, and the death of Rachel, innocent Rachel, a human filled with illusion.
My kind can live forever. I would have a long time, and many opportunities, to keep that vow.
CHAPTER 13
NOW
I WAS FOOLISH to attack him then, and am equally foolish to bait him now, but I have no other choice. I refuse to roll over and let Aubrey be king without ever challenging him.
I can sense his aura in the room but cannot see him, and he has not spoken.
Where are you, Aubrey? I ask him with my mind. Why do you hide from me?
I hear his laughing, taunting voice in my head; it is a voice I have come to hate with all my mind, all my strength, and all my soul. He says only four words, not even a sentence.
One line of a poem.
Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright …
I scream the wordless cry of the eagle, the hunting cry of the diving hawk, the angered cry of a caged beast, and I hear Aubrey laugh in my mind. I know where he was as I hunted on his land.
Even as he laughs I change my shape to a golden hawk that flies from that room in her animal rage and lands inside the tiger’s cage at the zoo. The sign, “Panthera tigris tigris,” has fallen, and its wooden post is snapped in two like a twig. The metal bars of the tiger’s cage are bent. The guard is lying on the ground, pale and motionless.
I do not care about the guard or the sign, only about Tora, the one creature I have loved since Alexander’s death. Tora, who is lying on her side, her paws bound, with a knife in her heart. She was born free, and deserved to live so. Instead she lived in a cage and was killed, bound and helpless. This more than anything makes me feel as if the knife was planted in my own heart instead of hers.
I shift back into my usual form and pull the knife from her, screaming another wordless cry of rage and grief. Tearing the ropes from her paws, I weep at each golden hair that has fallen from her and at each black hair that has forever lost its shine. I weep — weep as I did not when I lost my brother and my life. I weep until my thoughts run dark and my tears run dry.
Love is the strongest emotion any creature can feel except for hate, but hate can’t hurt you. Love, and trust, and friendship, and all the other emotions humans value so much, are the only emotions that can bring pain. Only love can break a heart into so many pieces.
The greatest pain I have ever felt rode on the back of love. I loved Alexander, and every injury he received seemed reflected onto me. His death tore my heart out and bled it dry, and now Aubrey has used my love for Tora to push the blade in deeper.
This is why, I have learned, the strongest of the vampires keep all these emotions at arm’s length: because they are weaknesses, and if you have weaknesses you can be taken down with all the other prey.
Close to dawn I lift my head, my long golden hair blending with Tora’s tiger fur. I do not think, but add the black stripes to my own tiger-gold hair.
“Look, my beautiful,” I whisper. “I have stolen your stripes. I will wear them so that your beauty will not be forgotten. My tiger,