The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [28]
I pick Aubrey’s knife up off the ground and contemplate it for a moment. He is defenseless, and if I struck him in the heart he could not raise a hand to protect himself. I trace the scar from my throat to my shoulder, remembering, and then, like lightning, I draw the knife along Aubrey’s collarbone in an identical wound.
“Remember this day, Aubrey. The wound you dealt long ago has returned to you. I’ll be satisfied with your blood, though it doesn’t begin to replace the lives of Alexander and Tora. Now get out.”
I let go of his mind, yet I can still feel it completely. It is an eerie sensation. I stand easily, his blood racing through my veins, replacing the power I lost in the fight and far more.
Aubrey pulls himself up into a sitting position, using a nearby table. His skin is flour white, and his eyes are almost empty as he raises his hand to the wound on his shoulder. No one has ever wounded him and lived to tell of it.
He slowly stands to leave, and the humans move away as he walks through them. Those that remain know what we are, and they know what such blood loss has done to his hunger and how hard it is for him to maintain his control as he leaves the room.
I turn my back on him, unafraid, and return my gaze to Fala, who is still sitting serenely on the table. She does not seem to remember almost causing my death.
I lash out with my power, and she jumps up gracelessly as the wooden table catches fire. Fala disappears, not wanting to fight.
CHAPTER 21
NOW
I WALK TOWARD JAGER, and humans bump into each other to get out of my way. I laugh as they hurry from the room.
“Come to see the show?” I ask him.
“I told you you were stronger than Aubrey,” he says. “The coward. I didn’t expect him to offer so much just to live. You are probably one of the strongest of us now — maybe as strong as I. It would be interesting to find out.”
“Another time, Jager,” I answer. The adrenaline and energy from the fight are still in me, and part of me wants to fight something stronger. But the rational part of my mind tells me I am far too giddy to fight anyone seriously.
“Of course, Risika,” he agrees. Jager fights simply for the challenge, not for a prize, and he does not fight anyone who he does not think has a fair chance unless it is necessary. At the moment I am drunk on Aubrey’s blood, and I would lose. “Your eyes are still golden from shifting to a tiger,” he tells me.
“I like them this way.” I laugh, looking into the shattered mirror. My once misty reflection is now completely gone, but I can see myself in my mind’s eye. My hair is still tiger striped, and my eyes are as golden as my silk tank top — the color they were when I was alive, before vampirism darkened them to black. I run my tongue along my teeth, licking off the last traces of Aubrey’s blood.
Jager disappears, and I realize that almost everyone has left. Tossing a black strand of hair off my face, I feel for the first time a familiar aura in the back of the room. I remember it from a letter I received recently, a letter with a tearstain on the page.
“So my stalker would visit me in person,” I say to his back. In this light the blond hair looks almost exactly as my own once did. I reach out with my mind, and even though I cannot read him I realize what he is. I remember the Triste witch who had been in the Café Sangra, who had given a note for Rachel to his vampiric victim.
I did not think much about it at the moment, but now I wish I had. I swear, suddenly realizing the truth I should have realized long ago.
“I was hoping I could convince you not to follow those creatures … but I guess it’s too late, isn’t it?”
I remember wondering why I never heard him fall.
“Rachel —” he starts to say.
“Alexander, don’t talk to me.” He has waited three hundred years to tell me he is alive? I damned myself years ago. I had — or thought I had — nothing left to lose, then. All the years I was alone. All the pain he could have spared me …
What pain has he known? I never went back to my father, because I did not want him to see what