“Cat got your tongue?” he asked after a moment.
“What have you done with my sister’s children?” My voice was hoarse. “Where’s Sara?”
He pulled a small stuffed lamb out of the crib and looked down at it. “The children are fine.”
Kristoff had been a looming threat, something that stayed in the distance to be dealt with by someone else. I hadn’t expected to meet him face-to-face. My mind felt numb with panic.
He closed his eyes and inhaled, his nostrils flaring. The hunger pattern branched around his mouth and eyes. Even that was identical to Matthias. I’d thought it was like a fingerprint, something that each vampire showed differently, but it seemed as if twins shared that as well as their appearance.
Through my fear, it reminded me that this vampire wasn’t without an Achilles’ heel. He would be affected by my blood. If he bit me he would lose his immortality much as Matthias had and there would be the chance to kill him. I’d volunteered for this. Funny how it had seemed like a reasonable idea before he was right here in front of me. Now it seemed to be a dangerous and deadly idea. But there was no going back now.
If I could get him to drink my blood, he was one wooden or silver stake away from complete destruction.
I forced myself not to cringe away from him as he drew closer.
“Your scent is just as tempting as they say it is.” He swept my hair off my throat and leaned closer. I tensed as I felt the cool brush of his lips against my neck before the sharpness of his fangs scraped against my skin. My heart thundered in my chest. He was going to do it.
But I couldn’t let him. The thought crashed over me. I couldn’t let him bite me, not yet. I didn’t know where the children were.
I didn’t have to worry. He pulled away with a small smile on his lips. It looked exactly like Matthias’s smile.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Jillian. I know, despite your enhancements, you’re only human. You’re not an assassin. You’re an innocent in all of this. I’ve seen you in his mind—someone who might seem so dangerous to us, but in reality needs to be protected. One who is as fragile as she is deadly. I see why he’s so intrigued by you.”
Matthias saw me as fragile and deadly. A delicate flower with an unfortunate aftertaste. I wasn’t sure I entirely agreed with him. I wasn’t that fragile, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Maybe the vampire knew me better than I thought he did.
I grappled for something to say. “It’s torture for him to be near me. You must have seen that through your bond with him. Standing this close to me is risky for you.”
“I saw everything, Jillian. All I needed were a few moments with his mind open to me and I saw everything I needed to know. Your scent
is
torture. And I know you’re a risk to me.” He walked a slow circle around me, his gaze taking in every inch as I stood there with my arms crossed tightly over my chest, afraid to move. Afraid to breathe.
I watched him warily. “You’re not going to kill me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not?”
I shook my head. “You never would have gone to the trouble of kidnapping my nieces if you were just going to kill me. You want to use me for something. And you think I’ll behave if you threaten the people I love.”
“Jillian.” His smile didn’t waver. “You’re spoiling my surprise.”
“What do you want from me?”
“All in good time.”
His cool demeanor wasn’t helping me to relax even a fraction. In fact, it was scaring me much more than if he’d been a raving lunatic.
There were footsteps in the hallway outside the nursery and I looked over my shoulder to see three men standing there. One I recognized as Meyers, Matthias’s former blood servant who’d brutally cut the key from his body.
“Your majesty?” he said, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of me.
“Take her and the others.” One of the men came toward me and grabbed my arm so tightly I gasped with pain. “But please be gentle with her. I don’t want her bruised.”
They stuck a piece of duct tape over my mouth and forcibly dragged me out of the room, down the stairs, and shoved me into the back of a van in the driveway leaving me undamaged but shaken. A few moments later, the unconscious bodies of Matthias and Noah joined me.
My mind was a blur but I forced myself to remain calm and not to lose hope. I was alive. That meant there was still a chance to find a way out of this. I seemed to lose hope when there were lulls, when I had too much time to think about the poison in my veins and what it meant for the future. When I was in danger, that was when my hope rose up inside of me ready to fight for the chance to live another day.
I didn’t have to be strong just for myself. I had to be strong for my nieces, for Sara, and for Matthias and Noah.
Kristoff wanted me to live. For now. And he thought, through what he’d seen in Matthias’s mind, that I was no danger to him, apart from my blood. I could work with that.
The van didn’t have windows so I couldn’t see where I was going. We drove for nearly an hour before the van came to an abrupt stop and the back door opened. The first thing I saw was the ocean, black and expansive with the moon reflected overhead. To my left was a huge luxury home with no close neighbors. It was the type of home a movie star might own. One of the A-listers who had tens of millions of dollars to burn on a nice piece of oceanside real estate.
The thugs pushed me forward toward the door, which opened before we even reached it. A thin girl with mousy blond hair stood there with a baby in her arms—Sara. My chest tightened and I tried to go to her, but the thug kept me firmly in his grip so I couldn’t move where he didn’t want me to. The girl smiled at us and I saw her fangs.
“My brother’s child is fine, as you can see,” Kristoff said from a bit behind me as I was pushed through the doorway and into the foyer of the house. “And the other children are in there.”
I looked to my right to see an open door leading into a huge room. Meg and Julie were inside the room, seated in front of a large flat-screen television that was showing
Finding Nemo
. They looked unharmed, and were watching the movie with undivided attention. I wasn’t sure if I should have felt sick or relieved when I heard them laugh. They were having fun. They had no idea where they were or what this meant.
Kristoff was in front of me when I turned around. “Let me take care of this for you.” He reached forward and ripped the tape off my mouth. It hurt like hell.
“You need to let them go. Please. I’ll do what you want without any duress.”
“Come.” He turned and continued walking through the home to the other side, away from the kids, until we reached a large room that looked like a banquet hall with a massive chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Large and expensivelooking oil paintings of landscapes adorned the walls that were painted a burgundy color. The crown molding was gold.
The room was empty apart from a large red chair with gold arms and legs near the back. It was a throne room in Malibu.
“Welcome to my home,” Kristoff said, following my gaze as I took in my surroundings. “It’s so good to be back close to the ocean again. My brother chose to live underground. I am not my brother. I like the fresh air and the smell of the ocean.”
My mouth was dry. “Please, we need to—”
He held up a hand. “Just a moment, Jillian. There’s something else I have to deal with first.”
Matthias was shoved across the room. The vampire behind him pushed him so hard that he fell to his knees on the hardwood floor. Dread slithered through me at how powerless he looked at the moment. He’d drank Jade’s blood in order to regain his strength so he could face off against his brother. It looked as if that was in vain.
They looked so much alike. Except one was sprawled on the ground and the other now sat on a throne looking down at him.
Kristoff’s face held concern, which I hadn’t expected. “You’re unwell.”
Matthias glared up at him. “I’m fine.”
“I’d sensed you were weakened. This is more than I expected.”
“Do you feel sorry for me?” Matthias pushed himself up to his feet. “It’s so nice of you to care.”
“Your tongue’s grown sharper in thirty years. Unfortunately for you, it’s not much of a weapon.”
“I assume you want to kill me.” Matthias said it bluntly, and it worried me that he’d already given up hope at the thought he was outmatched.
“How can I kill somebody who’s immortal?” Kristoff asked, watching Matthias carefully for his response.
Matthias exchanged a glance with me. “The ritual.”
“I know it worked, just as I said it would. You doubted me. You shouldn’t have.” He glanced at my disgusted expression at the mention of the immortality ritual. “You told her about it, didn’t you?”
“It’s disgusting,” I said, unable to hold my tongue.
“What is?”
He wanted me to say it out loud. “You murdered your own child so you could have the chance to live forever.”
I felt a shove at my back that made me fall forward onto my knees, hard enough to bruise.
The vampire behind me hissed. “Watch your mouth, you worthless human bitch. The only reason you’re not dead yet is because the king allows you to live.”
Kristoff inhaled slowly and released it. “I thought I asked that Jillian not be harmed?”
The vampire’s fierce expression wavered. “But your majesty—”
“Please take him away and deal with him. Now.”
A glance over my shoulder showed the vampire who’d shoved me was being dragged out of the room by one of the five vampires with us. The king spoke and his subjects obeyed. The thought didn’t ease my mind.
Kristoff’s gray eyes got a faraway look in them. “What I had to sacrifice for the ritual was not something I took lightly. Being king means one must make difficult choices that not everyone understands. You also made a difficult choice recently. You chose to have your friend Noah sired rather than let him die.”
“How do you know that?” Matthias demanded. “You were only in my mind the once and it was before that happened.”
“Thirty years of slumber didn’t weaken me as you might have thought. It strengthened me. You’re weak. Therefore, I can read you without you even realizing it.”
“Forget about mind reading.” I swallowed bitterly. “If you’re comparing what happened with Noah to what you did to your daughter, it’s not even in the same universe. Don’t you feel the least bit guilty? She was your daughter.”
“Of course I feel guilty, Jillian.” A serious expression now creased his brow. “It weighs on my conscience to this very day.”
I was surprised to see his pain, but it didn’t change anything. “Do you regret it?”
“Would that make a difference to you?”
“Probably not.”
“Blood sacrifices are necessary for all dark magic like what was used in the immortality ritual. All this time I never knew for sure if it worked as it was supposed to or if my daughter gave her life for nothing.”
There was no friendliness in the look in Matthias’s eyes. “It worked. If you know everything, then you also know that I drank Jillian’s blood. What kills all other vampires didn’t kill me.”
“I do know that.”
Matthias hissed out a breath. “You forced me to participate in that ritual. You made me a monster just like you, never satisfied with what you already had.”
Kristoff sighed. “You’re such a noble man, aren’t you? Or so you’d like everyone to believe.”
There were two vampires guarding the archway leading into this room and I knew another two were still standing by the front doors. This place was like a vault. I had no idea how I was supposed to escape with the children, but I had to figure it out as soon as possible. “If you forced him to drink the blood in that ritual, I can’t really blame him.”
Kristoff paced to the other side of the room before returning. There was stress and old disappointment in his expression. “All of Matthias’s protests were in vain. Once he got a taste of the blood he eventually had to be pulled away from her still body. Matthias is the one who killed my daughter and yet he still blames her death on me.”
I looked at Matthias with horror that deepened with every word Kristoff spoke.
His brow was deeply furrowed and he stared at the ground. “You set me up to end her life against my will—to use my guilt against me. It was another form of manipulation to keep me in line and away from thoughts of becoming king.”
This was an ancient power struggle between brothers. A rivalry that spanned centuries. I felt it—whatever love they’d had for each other in the past had soured and turned black with hate. It made me think of Cain and Abel—one bad, one good—whose deep-seated rivalry led to the very first murder.
Kristoff stood from his seat and walked over to face his brother. “We were so close for so long. We thought alike, we acted alike. This is the unfortunate event that finally drove us apart. I thought it would be just the opposite—that I was willing to share my discovery with you. I wanted you to live forever just like me and not have to fear death. Instead it prompted you to steal my throne, thinking that you knew best. And what has it gotten you?”