Shadow Keepers: Midnight Read online

  “Thank you,” he said, turning to her. “Your placement of the blade was most convenient.”

  Despite the horror of the attack and her wounds and the situation as a whole, she couldn’t help but smile. “I—” she began, looking wide-eyed at Tiberius. “Did you see that?” She’d thrown the blade with a power she’d never known before—and while she may have missed the target, she’d come close, and hit deep.

  “You have uncommon skill,” he said, a smile in his voice.

  “I think it is more fair to say that you have uncommon skill.”

  “Which I am happy to share. Hurry, there will undoubtedly be others.”

  After a few more twists and turns in the dim, dank corridors, she was beginning to think he was wrong about that. True, they’d encountered—and handily avoided—a few more traps, but for the most part their path was clear.

  “Wait,” Tiberius said. “Hold still.”

  She froze, watching intently as he turned in a circle, breathing deeply and peering into the musty shadows.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a heavy, rust-covered door.

  “Antonio?” Eager, she rushed toward it, only to be stopped by his arm, firm against her chest.

  “Watch.”

  He turned slowly, scouring the ancient tunnels. “Here,” he finally said as he tugged down a brass candleholder. He stepped on the metal, holding one end firmly in his hand as he straightened it, until finally he had a two-foot length of brass. “Stand back,” he said, then rammed the lock with the end of the makeshift pole. Immediately a flurry of stakes flew from hidden springs within the doorway and a spray of dust exploded from above. Tiberius turned away, his hand covering his nose and mouth. Caris did the same, uncertain why, but not willing to breathe anything that Tiberius wouldn’t.

  When the dust settled, she clutched his hand. “You would have been killed if you’d approached the lock.”

  “That was Baloch’s plan. And if I wasn’t killed, the additional hematite would have weakened me sufficiently that he could have easily subdued me.”

  “Hematite?”

  “The dust. It is a metal—a mineral—and a bane to vampires. And while I do not have to breathe to exist, it is a habit I enjoy. Had I caught a lungful of that stuff, I would be so weak now I could barely stand.”

  She tensed, the thought of Tiberius reduced in such a way troubling her deeply. She touched his shoulder, wanting to comfort, but he was already moving toward the open door—and the cell beyond.

  She followed, terrified of what she might find there. Her brother, alive or dead? Another prisoner? Or perhaps nothing at all.

  She stepped carefully over the threshold, walking where Tiberius walked in case there were other traps, then gasped when she saw the muslin-covered heap in the corner. It didn’t move—for all she knew it wasn’t even a person, but then Tiberius nodded gently. “It is him,” he said, and she didn’t doubt. She ran toward him and pulled the cloth down, then cried out in joy and anguish when she saw the boy who lay beneath. A mere shell of himself, curled up and fetid, barely breathing, so thin he might be a skeleton. But he opened his eyes, and she saw the recognition flicker in them. His lips parted, and she shook her head, her tears falling onto his papery cheeks. “No, don’t speak,” she whispered, her heart overflowing with relief that he was alive, and fear that he wouldn’t survive the night. “There will be time enough to talk.”

  The effort of opening his eyes seemed to have exhausted him, and he faded back into stillness. Panicked, she turned to Tiberius, who stood beside her now, a calm port for her terror. “He lives,” Tiberius said. “I’ll carry him.”

  She caught his sleeve. “Heal him.”

  He exhaled, and she watched the conflict play out on his face. Finally he shook his head, and she thought her muscles would go slack with disappointment.

  “Why not?”

  “This entire fortress is imbued with hematite, not only the dust we encountered. Just being here has greatly reduced my strength. I cannot transform into an animal,” he said, the implication of his words shocking her, but she didn’t question him. “I cannot transform into mist. I am, right now, not much stronger than a mortal man, and he is so far gone. With the hematite and the blood I gave to you, I don’t have the strength within me to pull him back from the brink, and you do not have the strength to carry two of us out.”

  She had to concede the point—and hope that their path getting out of the palazzo was as clear as the one going in.

  Naturally, it wasn’t.

  The first thing they saw as they stepped out into the night was Baloch himself—heading straight toward them.

  At least two dozen men flanked Baloch—and they were spreading out, filling the courtyard and destroying Tiberius’s planned line of retreat.

  “Come,” he said, tugging her back down into the dungeon. He hated the thought of retreating but hated more the possibility of losing Caris. Or Antonio, for that matter.

  With the boy flung over his shoulder, he raced through the tunnels, Caris’s hand tight in his. She was keeping up, but her strength would fade soon. They needed to get out, to get away from the palazzo. Away from the hematite and to a place where he could fight Baloch and not be at a disadvantage.

  With luck, he knew just the place.

  The trouble was, he needed more than luck. He needed blood.

  If what he planned had even the slightest chance of working, he needed to feed; he needed strength. He could not feed on the boy without killing him, and he would not feed on Caris. If anything should happen to him, she would need all her strength to survive. He could not tap what he’d given her.

  Which left him only one option, a despicable one. And even that relied on chance.

  “Where are we going?” Caris asked.

  “Up,” he said. He pointed to the right, to a small passageway he’d noticed as they came in. He’d caught the scent of it—yeast and meat and sour milk—and if he was right the passage led to a kitchen that was either part of the palazzo itself or separated only by a small atrium. The palazzo was his goal, specifically the tower. It might work—it might be suicide. But if he didn’t try, they would all three undoubtedly die this night.

  “You’re taking us inside?” Fear and shock colored her voice as they burst into the kitchens. A thin weren woman stared at him but made no move to attack, and as much as he despised her, he could not bring himself to kill her. Not when she stood with a child at her hip and a spoon in her hand.

  Instead he tugged harder at Caris’s hand and yanked her through the room and into the comparatively fresh air of the courtyard. Behind them, a warning bell clanged—the werewoman sounding the alarm. He would pay for his moment of charity.

  “There,” he said, racing toward the wooden door on the far side of the atrium. Unless he missed his guess, it led up and up to the looming tower that was the hallmark of Baloch’s palazzo. It was a gamble he had to take—there was no time to try other doors, not with Baloch’s men surely circling the palazzo even now.

  He burst through it, then froze when Caris screamed. A huge, hulking weren male stood in front of them. He’d called upon the change but hadn’t finished the transformation, and now he stood as a man, with the elongated features of a wolf.

  “You will not pass,” he growled, then leapt upon Tiberius, knocking him and Antonio to the ground.

  “No!” Caris cried, and hurled herself at his back, her knife sliding into his flesh so that the creature threw back his head and howled.

  It was all the advantage Tiberius needed. He took his own knife and thrust it deep into the creature’s jugular. What he did next, though, he did only for Caris. Because he needed to see her away from this place alive. Because he needed the strength to save the brother she loved.

  He pressed his mouth to the foul creature’s throat, and he drank, the weren male’s blood filling him, fueling him. The blood couldn’t completely overcome the effect of the hematite, but it would replenish what he’d lost h
ealing Caris, and it would give him additional strength as well. For her, it was worth the horror of drinking from that which he despised.

  The only question remaining: Would it be enough?

  “Fiend!” Baloch’s voice echoed through the atrium. “You dare drink from one of my men?”

  Tiberius rose, taking the weren’s body with him. Then he hurled it through the doorway. It hit Baloch’s approaching men, making them tumble backward. As they stumbled to regroup, Tiberius retrieved Antonio and turned back toward the stairs. “Go,” he shouted to Caris. “And do not stop until you reach the top.”

  “He is mine!” Baloch cried behind him. “He dies at my hand, and mine alone.”

  Those odds were fine with Tiberius, but not here, not now. He turned and raced up the stairs, taking Caris’s hand as he did and pulling her along with him.

  It was treacherous going. The stones were slick with age and the steps were narrow and uneven. The moon might be close to full, but the tower had only the smallest of slits for windows, and only a few shafts of pale moonlight filtered through. They pushed forward, though, and eventually emerged onto the roof of the tower, a low stone wall the only thing separating them from a long fall to the hard ground.

  “You cannot transform,” Baloch said, emerging behind them. “Even now, you stand upon hematite.”

  Tiberius took a step to the side, so that Caris was behind him, then a step backward, so that they were at the edge of the tower.

  “I don’t need to transform to kill you,” Tiberius said, and right then he was certain it was true. The weren’s blood was powerful, ripe as it was from the waxing fullness of the moon. He might not be able to transform, not with his feet planted on hematite-infused stones, but he was stronger than Baloch knew, and the element of surprise could be a powerful ally.

  His fingers twitched with the desire to go for his knife, now back in the sheath at his hip. He wanted it, wanted so desperately to thrust the blade deep into this vile weren creature who thought nothing of torturing and starving and abusing an innocent boy.

  He wanted—but he couldn’t. The risk was too great, because if he lost, Caris and Antonio were surely dead.

  “Attack, then,” Baloch said. “You want to hurt me? To kill me? Try your best, vampire. Try now, because you are not leaving this tower unless I am dead upon it.”

  “I wish that were so,” Tiberius said. “But I think that in this regard you are mistaken.”

  And while Baloch’s face shifted comically into confusion, Tiberius tightened his grip on Antonio with his left hand, then clutched Caris around the waist with his right.

  “What are we—” she began, but she didn’t finish the question. By then he had begun the leap off the tower, and her question had turned to a scream.

  “No!” Baloch said, and as Tiberius sprang away, he felt a tug on his leg and realized that Baloch had leapt, too, catching him in midair as they cleared the tower.

  As they hurtled toward the ground, Tiberius shook his leg, but it was no use, and as he was about to give up, Caris reached over, yanked out Tiberius’s dagger, and thrust it hard and fast through Baloch’s eye.

  The werewolf howled and let go—and began to tumble alone to the hard ground below.

  Tiberius didn’t see him fall. They were free of the hematite walls now, and as the ground rose up fast beneath them, he held tight to Caris and Antonio, then transformed into the sentient mist that would carry them away, safe at last.

  He took them only a few miles, his strength still diminished by the hematite and now strained by the burden of transforming not only himself but two humans. Beside him, Caris sat wide-eyed, her hands exploring her body, her lips parted in wonder. “Tend to your brother,” Tiberius said. “It will have been roughest on him, I fear.”

  Something like pain flashed through her eyes, and he thought that she would linger, but then she hurried to Antonio. Tiberius lay there, content to watch her care for her brother and struck by the dichotomy between the loving young woman and the budding warrior. When she came back, her manner was subdued as she sat down next to him. “He’s ill, but I believe he’ll live. You saved him.”

  “I did not do it alone.”

  Her smile was both timid and proud. “Did I kill him? Is he truly dead?”

  “A silver dagger through the eye and into the brain? Yes, I think we can safely say that Baloch is now dead.”

  “Good,” she said, and he agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment. “It had worn off,” she said softly. “I didn’t feel stronger when I thrust the blade. Not stronger in that way, at least. I just wanted to destroy him, and that gave me the strength to thrust the blade in true.”

  “You have plenty of strength of your own,” he said. “You never needed to borrow mine.”

  He watched her face as he spoke and saw with a twinge of sadness that she did not meet his eyes. They hadn’t talked about what he had revealed to her in the tunnels—there had been no time. But now the truth was settling down around them, and there was no denying what he was any more than there was denying his fear that by revealing what he was to save her, he had lost her as well.

  “Tiberius …”

  He could hear the hesitation in her voice, and he closed his eyes against the words he knew were coming. Words of regret, if not fear. For whatever he hoped could exist between them, he had been of this world for too long not to know the way of things.

  “I’m to be married soon.”

  His heart twisted; this was more difficult than he could have imagined. “I know.”

  “You have told me that you’re sworn to protect my family.”

  “I am,” he said. “You, your husband. Your children.” He clenched his fist around a nearby stone, crushing it to dust. Just the thought that she could lie with another man …

  “Please don’t think that I’m asking you to rescue me from that. What I say now has nothing to do with Giancarlo. But, Tiberius, please. I don’t love him.” He watched as she drew in a trembling breath, hope sprouting within him again. “I love you.”

  It was as if the heavens opened up and sang. “What I am, it doesn’t scare you?”

  “The only thing that scares me is being away from you.”

  He couldn’t speak. Her words, her love, they filled him, and all he could do was pull her close.

  She melted against him, and he sighed with pleasure. This was where she belonged, at his side, in his heart. “Will you turn me?” she whispered.

  Her lips were pressed to his chest as she spoke so that the question reverberated through him, bringing equal parts pleasure and pain. He wanted to be strong and tell her no; he feared he would tell her yes.

  Now he only kissed her hair and told her that he loved her.

  She lifted herself up onto her elbows and peered into his eyes, the question so clear it didn’t need to be spoken.

  “I fight the evil inside myself every day. There is pain. There is anguish and rage and blind fury. And, Caris, my love, there is an overwhelming urge for blood. To feed. To kill. I hate to think of you consumed by that.”

  “You bear it,” she said.

  “I have no choice.”

  “I love you,” she said, pressing her lips to his. “So I have no choice, either.”

  Caris jerked awake, then realized with horror what had yanked her so rudely away from the pleasure of sleeping in Tiberius’s arms—the sound of her father.

  “You get away from him, you filthy little trollop,” he roared, his face mottled with anger. “Did I raise a whore?”

  Tiberius was on his feet now, and she clung to his side, her eyes darting from her father to Antonio, who had awakened and was struggling to sit up.

  “I suggest you watch your tongue, sir,” Tiberius said.

  Albertus snarled. “You vile creature. I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

  “Father,” Antonio said, his voice little more than a croak. “Father, no.”

  But Albertus’s attention was only on Tiberius. “D
o you think I don’t know what passed between you and my daughter in the stable? Do you think I don’t know how you have despoiled her?”

  “Father, please.” Caris stepped toward him, her hands out, imploring. She saw him pause, then turn and look at her. The harshness left his face then, replaced by the soft features of the father who’d cuddled her upon his knee as a child. “Father,” she whispered, then ran to him when he held out his hand, realizing too late that she was a fool to trust him.

  He grabbed her wrist and tugged her to him, his knife at her throat.

  Two guards flanked him, crossbows now raised, wooden stakes loaded and pointed at Tiberius. “We will walk out of here,” Albertus said. “And you will walk away from my family and my daughter. You are both fortunate Giancarlo will still have her. You will marry at dawn,” he said to Caris, “and I will be well rid of you.”

  Her body went cold and rigid. She tried to speak, but there were no words. She told herself it didn’t matter—Tiberius wouldn’t let this happen to her. He wouldn’t let the marriage happen, wouldn’t let her father speak to her thus.

  And when Tiberius spoke, it was as if every hope inside her had swelled, and she clung to his words like the last leaf of autumn clinging fast to a tree.

  “You are taking her nowhere,” he said.

  “Dead or married,” Albertus said. “Do you think that at this moment I care how my daughter leaves you? But she will leave you.”

  “Kill her, and I will kill you.”

  “You won’t,” Albertus said. “There is a bond between us.”

  “No,” Tiberius said. “There isn’t.”

  For a moment, Caris saw fear flicker on her father’s face, but it passed. “Kill me, then. But the girl will already be dead, and you possibly along with her,” he added, nodding at the marksmen beside him. “Let us leave, and she lives. And so do you.”

  Caris held her breath as Tiberius turned to look at her. “I would rather be dead than away from you,” she said.

  “And I cannot bear the thought of you lying cold in a grave.”