“Your father’s right. You’re incredibly strong, Jessica, and it’s clear you don’t realize it. Power leaks out of you. Some will covet that strength, but most will seek to destroy it. Valdov died because he chose to fight you for power, but defeating him equalized us with the vampires. You made the right choice to end his life.”

We arrived at the top of a back stairway. The old treads looked well used. Rourke moved aside to let me go first, grabbing a handful of my ass as I went down.

I had to admit, no matter how shitty my future was as an equalizer of the supernatural race, I loved this man.

22

“Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?” I asked. My fingertips brushed against cool stone. Feeling the rough texture of the wall was the only thing rooting me in place. We were trying to reach the area where I was held the first time, thinking Ray may be in a similar room. “I can’t see a single thing.”

“I smell something,” Rourke answered. “But it’s not Ray. It’s the old vamp I had by the neck.” Rourke was directly in front of me, his scent making him easy to follow. “I left the door of the cell open, but they must have stayed in the area. If the underground tunnels you told me about were a maze, this place is one too.”

All my senses were muted. “I can’t smell anything. How are you able to get through the mask?” Whatever spell this was, it was strong enough to blanket my senses. “This feels nothing like it did with Conan. Before, I could see everything, except for the fact I thought we were in a dungeon the entire time.”

“I think this is a new ward,” Rourke answered. “It has a taste, but it’s fresh.”

I inhaled, but I couldn’t taste anything. “The other spell had a flavor too. Is it tart?”

“Yes.” Rourke stopped abruptly.

I pulled up just short of running into him. “I wonder why I can’t sense it.”

Rourke’s body tensed, suddenly alert. “There’s something else here. Can you feel it?”

“No,” I said, frustrated. “I’m going to throw my magic out again and see what I can find.” I gathered my power and extended it into the area.

This time I did detect something. It was very faint and heavily masked. “Whatever it is, it has the same crab-apple taste I told you about. I’m thinking—”

“Come.” A broken Russian accent cut through the darkness. “We are here.”

Rourke’s blood jumped. He was a hairsbreadth away from reacting, which wouldn’t end well for the old vampire.

We both knew it was Yuri’s voice, but we couldn’t tell where it was coming from, or if there was another threat attached to it.

“Yuri,” I called. “Are you and Alana alone?”

“For the time being,” he replied. “But you must hurry. The Queen is angry with us.” His voice sounded strong and sure, nothing like before.

And he seemed to be waiting for us.

Rourke and I edged farther into the darkness, moving carefully, trying to sense if this was a trap. “The spell breaks here,” Rourke said, reaching out to grab my wrist and guide me around a corner.

Once my hand skimmed over a doorjamb, the haze immediately lifted.

We were in some sort of storage room. It was covered in cobwebs and dust, more than a few inches thick in some places. A single lightbulb illuminated the far corner, shedding some weak light, but everything else was etched in shadows.

Alana hissed.

I glanced around Rourke’s shoulder. She sat in the middle of the room. Her head wound was more or less healed, if you called a gaping scar with a partial indent healed, but at least she was awake and it wasn’t oozing. The most alarming thing, however, were her eyes. They were pulsing a pewter color and she seemed to be leaking bloody tears.

“What the hell is this?” Rourke said. “What is she doing?” He’d come to a full stop ten feet from where she was bound and hadn’t moved.

Alana rocked in place, and was mumble-hissing over and over again in what was likely Russian, but it was too garbled to tell.

“Yuri,” I asked. “Did you bind her to that crate?” I pointed to the chains he’d obviously brought with him from the cell, which were strung around her body and hooked to some kind of wooden storage box to keep her in place.

Instead of stating the obvious, he said, “We could’ve stayed well hidden from you, but Alana knew you were coming and bid me to find you. Tying her was the safest thing, as she is … unpredictable.”

My eyes flicked back to Alana, who appeared to be out of her ever-loving mind. “Unpredictable” was a quaint way to say she would rip our faces off if she had the chance.

I found it hard to believe she could form a coherent thought and speak to Yuri. She caught my eye and started waving a yellowed fingernail around in a circle, chanting something while sniffing the air in front of her like a dog.

Jesus.

“Yuri.” I slid out from behind Rourke and moved into the room. “What’s going on here? How did Alana know we would be coming? And was that your spell out there? The one that tastes like crab apple?”

“Alana grows stronger out of the cell,” he responded. “But we must vacate this place soon. Danger is coming quickly and they must not find her here. If they do, things will not be as they should. We have waited too long for our freedom and we grow impatient.”

Okay, what?

“Why have you been kept prisoner here?” Rourke demanded. “If you are indeed the Queen’s blood-kin, she has broken a law by jailing you. It’s a high crime to harm your relatives according to vamp laws. That I do know.”

Yuri appraised Rourke, a reserved expression on his face. “It was necessary. She had no choice in the matter. Alana could not be contained … any other way.”

“What do you mean necessary?” I asked. “You willingly chose that lifestyle? Starved and rotting in a dirty cell? You can’t make us believe that was your only option. There had to be another way.”

Yuri sighed. “Alana is a seer. Eudoxia had no knowledge of us for many years. Our existence was kept from her on purpose. Once she found us, the damage was already too great. We had no other choice.”

“Seer?” My mouth fell open. I glanced over at Alana, who was still chanting and drawing circles in the air. Oracles and seers were of the same ilk. My first thought was poor little Maggie. Her future was looking bleaker by the second. My second thought was holy shit. “It was Valdov, wasn’t it? He turned you for some kind of gain of his own. Maybe for the throne?”

“Yes,” Yuri answered. “He turned me into a vampire because he wanted the throne. He saw that Vlad would not succeed and was determined to gain his own power.” He glanced lovingly at his wife. “But he did not turn Alana.”

Rourke’s face was stoic. “You turned her.”

“Of course.” Yuri sighed as he sat on the edge of the crate next to his wife. “I kept her turning a secret as long as I could, but I was a fledgling and we were both very weak. I should not have been able to turn her so young and I blame myself for her insanity. We had no guidance and craved the teachings of a true Master. Valdov punished us soundly for my interference. He took away all our wealth, our status, and closeted us away. Until…”

“He found out what your wife was truly capable of,” Rourke finished. “Seers are very rare in any Sect, but vampires especially. I’ve never even heard a whisper of one.”

A pained expression crossed the old vampire’s face. “Yes.” He bowed his head. “Turning my wife was the biggest mistake I ever made. She deserved a happy life and I made it a horror instead.” Misery etched his features. I glanced at Rourke. His face didn’t need to tell me what I already knew.

We would’ve each made the same choice, given the same circumstances. Living without the other now was unthinkable. We couldn’t blame Yuri at all.

“How long did Valdov keep your existence quiet from the Queen?” I asked.

“Four hundred years.”

I sucked in a breath. “How could he do such a thing? It should’ve been an impossible task. If the Queen was the ruler—”

“At the time of our making, she was not our Queen,” Yuri said firmly. There was respect in his voice for her. It surprised me. Why would he have love for a Queen who had forced them to live like rats? “Eudoxia had been turned by Vlad only a single year before, in the hopes he could gain power through the family. My brother, Ivan, was terrible indeed and had committed many atrocities by that time. Vlad had hoped to marry Eudoxia to put himself in power, but she … resisted … and things fell apart. They were forced to flee the country—”

“Life force … she craves it…” Alana’s voice sounded shrill and a lot more precise than anything she should be capable of uttering. “But … she will not get it,” she continued. “They will come … those who wake … from those below … they take much…” As she spoke nonsense, blood tears coursed from the corners of her pewter eyes, etching trails of red down her white face. Her hair was wiry and askew, her features sunken and bleak.

I took an unconscious step backward. Rourke reached out to comfort me, sensing my distress. “I don’t think weres and oracles mix very well,” I said, turning my head slightly toward Yuri. “We need to get her some help—”

“Silence!” she screeched, a curved nail pointed straight at my chest.

My mouth snapped shut.

She began to rattle her chains, her arms and legs twisting erratically. Yuri stood and tried to calm her. “My love, you must relax. We will leave here soon, as promised.” His voice was tender. “You wanted to talk to the girl. She is here. Say your piece and we will leave.”

All at once, a power surge shot around the room. It was so strong it slammed both Rourke and me against the wall. The only words Alana uttered before Yuri screamed were garbled.