Authors: Melissa Darnell
Covet (53 page)
Afterwards, the mind connection had made it all even worse by allowing Tristan to pick up my every thought while I silently struggled not to freak out.
Dad couldn’t read our minds thanks to Tristan’s and my Clann genes, which gave our minds a natural block against all other vamps’ minds. Unfortunately Tristan and I had zero trouble reading each other’s every thought. It would have been great if there had been some sort of off switch to the ability. But for now, there didn’t seem to be one. The only way we could block it was to be in separate rooms.
Which was why, after Tristan had fallen asleep inside the cabin, still hurt and confused by my reaction to him at the gas station, I’d snuck out here to the woods to catch a breath. And to finally give in to the thousand and one worries I hadn’t dared think when he was awake.
I sighed, allowing the tree beside me to hold me up. I was so tired, but my mind wouldn’t shut off and let me rest.
I refused to regret turning Tristan. He was the only one for me. He always had been, and he always would be. Holding his broken and bloody body that even magic couldn’t save after the rogue vamp councilman Gowin had ripped a hole through Tristan’s chest, I had known I couldn’t let Tristan die no matter what the consequences. Right or wrong, turning Tristan had been the only decision I could possibly make at the time.
Now the question was whether we could survive that decision.
Tristan and I had been through so much to get to this point. And yet none of it had prepared me for the battle to come. Dad said the most danger for fledglings was in the first few days after turning, when the human mind struggled to assimilate the vamp DNA. During this phase, the brain tended to react as if to a concussion, shutting off the memory center and operating solely on the baser levels of senses and instincts. The memory would return in time, but it could take days.
In the meantime, Dad warned that Tristan might be highly emotional and irrational sometimes, and have difficulty concentrating for long periods. In addition, Tristan would have the vamp impulse to feed with no understanding of why he felt such cravings, and he’d have the speed, strength and reflexes of a full vamp.
As Tristan’s sire, or maker, it was my responsibility to fix him, to bring him back to some semblance of who he once was. If I failed, if Tristan revealed to human society that vampires really existed before I could help him recover his memories and self control, the council would kill him.
The cabin door creaked out in warning, and my shoulders tensed.
Just me, Dad thought as he slowly walked over to join me.
I couldn’t stop a sigh of relief. Thank God I had Dad to turn to for advice on how to train a fledgling, because I was completely clueless here.
“Come to get some fresh mountain air?” Dad murmured.
“No, just needing some space to worry about Tristan. He can hear my every thought, whether I want him to or not, and I can hear his. He’s so lost and confused right now. How are we going to tell him about everything?”
“We cannot,” Dad said. “We must be patient and allow his memories to return to him on their own. He will never truly believe what he does not remember himself, and right now he is in much too volatile a state to handle all the ramifications of our current situation. You will have to protect him from your thoughts.”
“He trusts me completely. What if he never remembers it all? What if I’m not strong enough, or smart enough, or we don’t train him right or fast enough…?”
Dad rested a hand on my shoulder. “Now you know all that I have gone through with you. Becoming responsible for another’s continued existence is the heaviest responsibility there is. But it does grow easier with time.”
Time. How much did we even have? “Will the council try to find us out here?”
He shook his head. “They will simply watch the news reports for now. The Clann, however…”
“Tristan’s mom is leading them now. Why would they be a problem?”
“We both know how she feels about our kind.”
And how Mrs. Coleman blamed me for turning her only son into the very thing she feared the most in life.
“She might hate my guts,” I agreed. “But she’d never send someone to hunt down her own son. She adores Tristan. And she knows he needs us to help him get better.”
“True. But as the new leader, it might be a while before she regains full control of the Clann. When we left the Circle, the Clann clearly was not appeased by Gowin’s death. Many descendants were voicing their belief that the council secretly sanctioned his actions, and it may take Nancy quite some time to convince them otherwise. In the meantime, it is reasonable for us to be cautious in case there are descendants who would wish to find us and seek retribution for turning their former leader.”
After his father’s death, Tristan had been voted Clann leader only minutes before Gowin, his rogue army, and the misinformed vamp council had attacked the Clann in the Circle. But even before the attack, the hatred and fear between the vamps and the Clann ran centuries deep, sparked by the danger each species presented the other and fed by the scars of loved ones lost in countless wars. Those wars had only ended after Tristan’s father and grandfather worked for years to create a peace treaty with the vamp council. A treaty that now seemed on the brink of total failure in the wake of last night’s battle.
I sighed and stared at the seemingly endless miles of surrounding woods now turning to shades of gray in the fast growing dusk. “Even if the Clann comes after us, they can’t find us out here. We didn’t leave a trail, and no one knows about this place, right?”
“They do not have to know about it. If the Clann is determined to find us, the odds are in their favor that they will. Do not forget, they have both spells and the Keepers to aide them.”
Oh lord. I had forgotten about the Clann’s alliance with the Keepers, a group of families also originally from Ireland who in the old country had agreed to have a permanent shapeshifter spell placed upon them that spanned generations. Once shifted into the form of giant black panthers, the Keepers could read Clann minds, including mine and probably still Tristan’s, too. My best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Ron Abernathy, was one of a long line of Keepers.
Could the Clann force him and his family to help them hunt us?
I swallowed the growing knot in my throat. We were deep in the woods hours away from Jacksonville. How would the Keepers scent us—by following the smell of our car exhaust?
“If we stay away from the surrounding towns, we should be fine here,” Dad said. “But we must remain cautious. And if you sense any sort of magic being used, you must let me know at once. They may try to use a spell to track us down if they become truly determined.”
Oh great. I hadn’t thought of that. At a loss for words, I nodded.
I could sense when magic was used near me. It would hit me as a sensation of pins and needles stabbing the back of my neck and arms. But would I still feel it if it was being used far away? I had to hope so. To be on the safe side, maybe I should try to do some sort of invisibility spell on us to block any tracking attempts. Nanna told me once that all spells were simply willpower and focused intention. Surely I could cook up something to keep our location out here hidden.
“So about Tristan’s training,” I began, my fingertips drumming against the bark of the tree I leaned a shoulder against. “You’ve got a plan, right?”
“Not exactly. Every fledgling is a unique situation, and even the council members occasionally fail to help a fledgling overcome the initial bloodlust. And of course there will be the added problem of Tristan’s magical skills to contend with, which I can assure you no sire before you has ever had to deal with.”
“So we just have to figure this out on our own?”
The cabin door creaked open again, and my heartbeat raced even faster.
Tristan.
I forced my mind to go blank.
A second later Tristan was at my other side. “Hey. I woke up and no one was around.”
“Just out getting some fresh air,” Dad murmured. “It is a lovely sunset, is it not?”
Tristan watched me, trying to read my emotions when he couldn’t read my thoughts. “Are you okay?”
I made myself smile. “Everything’s fine. How’d you sleep?”
He shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I woke up thirsty, though.”
Dad’s gaze darted to meet mine. He turned toward us. “We should go back inside and feed.”
But Tristan wasn’t listening. Frowning, he raised his chin and sniffed the air. “What is that?”
I sniffed, too. “What?” I smelled the chimney smoke, the dead leaves under our feet, the dirt. But nothing more.
And then Tristan was gone. He was so fast even my vamp eyes couldn’t follow his movements.
Shocked, I looked at Dad.
“Deer hunters,” Dad growled.
Oh God. Tristan had scented humans somewhere in the woods.
We took off after him, with only the newly disturbed leaves to show us which way he had gone.
ISBN: 9781459241282
Copyright © 2012 by Melissa Darnell
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