Ascended Page 3

  “Sixty years, my friend. Sixty years.”

  A noise of distress escaped his mouth before he could control his response, and he sensed the Prophet’s sympathy. “I am sorry.”

  Kirios shook his head, blinking back tears of defeat. It wasn’t his fault, he told the Prophet silently.

  “It isn’t your fault,” the Prophet replied. “Not your fault.”

  Kirios squeezed his eyes shut in agony. “If not my own, then whose?”

  “No one’s. We are all at the mercy of the will of the gods.”

  When perhaps a few days passed, the Prophet turned to him, his eyes bright from sleep deprivation. “I must tell you the reason why I arranged to be in prison with you.”

  Kirios grunted. So the madman had deliberately gotten himself thrown in prison.

  “I’ve had visions of you, Kirios. I am here to save you.”

  “Why?” Kirios frowned. What was so special about him?

  Tears glistened in the young seer’s eyes. “Oh, Kirios. This awful war … it’s going to haunt our world for centuries.”

  The hopelessness of it threatened unsuccessfully to end a life that couldn’t be ended. “Centuries?” he gasped.

  “For centuries. At the end of the second millennium anno Domini, Gaia will set in motion events that will lead to the end of this war.”

  Second millennium anno Domini … dear Gaia!

  “A child will be born into the end of the twentieth century … a child with blood of both covens running in her veins—a half lykan, half magik who will bring this war to a conclusion.”

  Kirios shook his head in amazement. “What has any of this to do with me?”

  His eyes blazed, his face taut with emotion. “I see you in that future. You are an important element of that future.” With that, the Prophet seized a hold of Kirios’s head and pressed Kirios’s open mouth to his neck, forcing the vampyre to drink from his blood. Sixty years of starvation … force was not really necessary.

  Kirios groaned with exultation and sank his teeth through the soft flesh of the Prophet’s neck, drinking and drinking until the blood flowed into every cell of his being, blood unlike any other he had tasted. He jerked back careful, even when so hungry, to take only what he needed. He underestimated his sudden speed and smacked his head off the wall. He barely felt it. Kirios gasped, reaching up to feel his skull … no mark, no blood. Nothing. He laughed, and the Prophet smiled, shuffling back into a sitting position.

  Kirios stared at his hands, looking for some sign in his skin to explain this entirely new feeling in his body. He felt stronger than he ever had before.

  “What have you done?” he asked.

  The Prophet shook his head. “The gods … they made me special. My blood … it has changed you. You will be faster, stronger, and you will be able to mask other supernaturals’ trace.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know. I am only doing what I’ve been led to do in my visions.”

  Kirios nodded. “I understand. But what am I to do with this?”

  The Prophet shrugged. “Whatever comes naturally to you, my son.”

  The seer struggled to his feet and Kirios rushed to help him. “I have taken too much.”

  “No, no. You did fine. Most vampyres do not have your restraint.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you out of here.”

  At that, he yelled at the top of his voice, screaming for help. When they heard the shuffling of feet drawing closer, the Prophet turned away from the entrance so their captors would not see the neck wound, only the blood on his hands. Kirios lay on the ground, his mouth wiped clean of the blood, pretending to be as weak as ever. It was a masquerade that would end once the Midnights looked close enough to see the fullness in his body, the healthy sheen of his skin and hair.

  “What is all this yelling?”

  “I’ve been hurt,” the Prophet grumbled.

  “Let me have … dear goddess, man, what the Hades have you done?”

  “I slipped. I’m bleeding badly.”

  “Can’t you fix that yourself?”

  “You haven’t fed me for days. I don’t have the energy.”

  “Fine.” The first magik turned to the other. “Take the spell down.”

  There was only a moment’s silence and then a rush like waves crashing onshore.

  “Go, Kirios!” the Prophet yelled.

  He was gone before they even knew what had happened, running like the wind itself, brushing by blurred magiks and out of their citadel. Yes, he was a different creature from the one that had been thrown into the prison. He was an altogether new breed.

  Paris, 1385

  “I have something to tell you.”

  Kirios narrowed his eyes on the beautiful woman in his bed. Her long, elegant lines were enticing as all Hades, and any other time he would have been perusing them languidly. But her tone was not something to be dismissed. The faerie in his bed had been keeping secrets from him.

  “Are you going to spoil the party, love?” he asked lazily, disguising how tense he had grown. The party he referred to was the one going on as they spoke. The young Charles VI of France had just been wed to his even younger bride, Isabeau of Bavaria, and France was holding its first-ever court ball to celebrate. The faerie in his bed was a Daylight spy he had met a few years ago when tracking a rogue vampyre. She had been gathering evidence that the vampyre was a dog working for the Midnights, and the two of them had collided on the hunt. Collided and then fallen straight into bed with one another.

  Theirs was a casual relationship, but one of mutual respect and trust. Or so he had thought. She told Kirios the coven had reason to believe the Midnights would use the celebration of the king’s marriage as an opportune time to attack the Daylights, who had set up one of their largest branches of the coven in Paris. Kirios had been in Scotland at the time, hunting a particularly nasty lykan with his gang of hunters, when the faerie appeared, asking for help. He gladly acquiesced. They’d just heard word that Richard II of England was sending a small army invasion force against the Scots, and Kirios didn’t want to get stuck in the middle of his idiocy. It seemed he was forever dodging the battles involving the English and the French. Now, after twenty-eight years, the English were trying to pull the Scottish back into another damn war.

  Dear Gaia, one war was enough for Kirios.

  His people had assured him they could find the lykan without him, and off he’d gone. It was, after all, a break from the tedium of hunting rogue Daylights. He much preferred the chance to cut down Midnights, whether magik or faerie, loving the complete shock on their face when they realized he was impervious to their magik—another beautiful gift from the Prophet’s blood.

  “We did not just meet by chance,” she said softly, drawing the bedcovers over herself nervously.

  Kirios shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand, Saffron.”

  “I was captured within the stronghold of the Midnight Coven when I was spying. I was careless. Or maybe I wasn’t. He was a Cassandrian and knew I was there. He told me to call him the Prophet. That he had seen me in his visions. That I would play a part in bringing the war to an end … seven hundred years in the future.” She shook her head in amazement. While she spoke, Kirios’s pulse raced.

  He stumbled over to the bed and plunked down beside her, his eyes wide with excitement. All these years and nothing. He’d almost gone crazy with frustration because nothing had pointed him in the right direction. Finally, here was something.

  “Only the strongest of us live that long now, Kirios. He says I am strong too.”

  Kirios chuckled and stroked her cheek. “I’m not surprised. You’re just a baby and already you’re one of the greatest spies within the coven.”

  She blushed. “You think so?”

  He tsk-ed. “No more compliments for you until you tell me what else he said.”

  “He told me about you. Nothing more … just where to find you.”

 
“Why didn’t you tell me this when we first met?”

  “I was afraid. I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

  “And now …”

  She laughed. “Kirios, I brought you all the way to France with false information to speak with you about this.”

  He snorted. So that was why things had been so quiet around here, why they couldn’t find any signs of an imminent attack from the Midnights.

  “Why did you not speak with me in Scotland?”

  Saffron bit her lip and ducked her head, her long, silver-blond hair falling in front of her stunning face. “I wanted to be on home ground for such a declaration.”

  Kirios struggled not to laugh at her logic. “Of course. How silly of me.”

  She shrugged off his teasing and looked up at him with wide, pleading eyes. “Why did he tell me to find you, Kirios?”

  “Because he once visited me too.”

  With that he told her all he could, about the Prophet, about his visions, of what he thought Kirios’s help would do. And now Saffron too.

  “So.” She frowned in thought. “What does that mean for us?”

  “I think it means that you and I are stuck with one another for a very long time.”

  St. Petersburg, Russia, 1725

  Kirios waited impatiently for Petrovsky, burrowing into his fur coat. He wasn’t cold. He was never cold. But the city was charged with apprehension. Peter, the emperor of Russia, had died the night before, and with no heir apparent, a sense of foreboding hung above St. Petersburg like an omen of what was to come.

  His ears perked up, and he spun around at the sound of approaching footsteps. Petrovsky.

  “Reuben,” he muttered, coming toward him. Kirios had caused a lot of suspicion over the years; legends of a vampyre who couldn’t be hurt by magik had circulated. He’d found it necessary to change his name and stay out of the magiks’ way so the legend could die. His instincts told him he should remain a shadow until the time was right.

  “What took you?”

  “Anna’s father. He thought we should properly mourn the emperor.”

  Kirios frowned. “I forgot he’s quite involved in human affairs.”

  Petrovsky nodded. Theirs was a strange and unexpected friendship. A few years back, when Kirios had been on a hunt in St. Petersburg, he’d come across this young Midnight trying to help a Daylight. At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, so he stalked him for a while. Petrovsky was of lower-class descent among the Midnights and seemed to go out of his way to find Daylights, spending his nights searching the underworld of St. Petersburg with the determination of a bloodhound. Finally, Kirios, concerned for the overeager young magik who was most certainly going to be killed by the supernaturals who intrigued him merely for being a Midnight, had enough and revealed himself to the boy.

  Petrovsky was fascinated by other supernaturals, had no ill-feeling toward them whatsoever. And for some reason, Kirios believed him. Petrovsky hated the mindless prejudice of the Midnights who had never treated him well anyway, and like a young soldier desperate to join the war, accepted Kirios’s command. A Midnight working for the Daylights was an unimaginable gift.

  First Kirios had masked Petrovsky’s trace so that the Head of the Midnight Coven would never know his true intentions, and then he’d set about making the boy wealthy. Kirios spread rumors that Petrovsky had killed many Daylights and that, alongside the boy’s quirky charm, made him a great favorite with the Head of the Midnight Coven. Certain sacrifices had to be made to prove himself. Petrovsky had to kill some Daylights, but Kirios compartmentalized that issue as a necessity of war and was proven right when Petrovsky was given a position on the Council. It was not long after he married Anna, the daughter of a prominent Midnight and a member of a very old, influential family within the coven.

  “I came here because you said you had urgent news,” Kirios reminded him.

  “I am sorry. I could not get away.”

  “Fine. What is the problem, Alex?”

  Alex grinned. “Anna. She is with child.”

  The vampyre’s pulse leapt. Yes. This was it. This would help change everything.

  “Then we must work out a plan.”

  The young man smiled cheekily. “I thought that was what you would say. You want to teach him, don’t you?”

  Kirios nodded. “We have to. Your children must know the truth of this war, Alex.”

  Petrovsky grew very serious. “Of course, Reuben. No child of mine will be contaminated with Midnight insanity.”

  New Jersey, USA, 1950s

  “Holy—” Kirios yelped, his glass of blood going everywhere as he jumped. His gang of Rogue Vampyre Hunters were all out and about in New York, prowling the night for their varied predators. He was taking a moment for sustenance when a familiar magik popped up before him, inches from his face.

  The Prophet smiled sheepishly and took a few steps back. “Sorry, I’ve never quite got the hang of a communication spell.”

  Kirios shook his head. “What … how?”

  The Prophet looked like a sixty-year-old man now, but his bright blue eyes convinced Kirios that the magik in front of him was definitely the seer he hadn’t seen in almost two thousand years.

  “Still as articulate as ever, Kirios. Or is it Reuben now?”

  He nodded shakily. Not many things could unsettle him, but the sudden appearance of this guy definitely did. “What are you doing here?”

  The Prophet tapped his head. “Had a few more visions I thought you might be interested in.”

  Excitement rushed through every cell in Kirios’s body. “Seriously? No joke … things are finally going to happen? Jeez, I almost gave up hope—”

  “I liked you better when you couldn’t talk.”

  He scowled at the Cassandrian. “Fine, what’s going on?”

  The magik raised an eyebrow before settling onto Kirios’s sofa. “Nice place you have here.”

  The vampyre itched to hit the words out of the magik’s mouth, but he tried to remember this was the man who’d saved his life.

  After a few minutes of awkward silence, the seer finally smiled. “Okay. Here’s what’s going on. I’ve seen this girl. A Midnight. The daughter of a Council member, to be more precise. She is, shall we say, against the war. Her name is Atia.”

  “What has she got to do with anything?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Is she … the mother of the child?”

  “Don’t know.”

  And just like that, he was gone.

  Kirios stared open-mouthed at the empty space on the sofa.

  “Fucking fortune-tellers.”

  Some fifty-odd years later

  He watched the girl as she stared up at the moon from her bedroom window, her pale hair like a beacon drawing him in. Kirios sighed. He had found her. At last. After seeing the evidence of her powers at the house in the woods, of what she’d done to her uncle Ethan, Kirios knew that Caia Ribeiro was the one he had been waiting for. All these years. All the mistakes.

  When the Prophet had come to him about Atia, he had followed her, watching her for any sign of what was to come. She was beautiful and powerful. Petrovsky told him she stayed clear of the war, suggesting she was, as the Prophet had said, against it. But her beauty was enough to entice the Head of the Coven, Devlyn, to ask for her hand in marriage. Her family wouldn’t let her say no. Kirios had known at that moment, had seen his chance: she was going to be the mother of the child from the prophecy.

  So he revealed himself to her, and along with Petrovsky’s help, explained all they had planned. Through her they received information direct from Devlyn himself, and he never knew because Kirios masked her trace. Atia helped willingly. She despised Devlyn.

  For a number of years, life went on that way, and during them, she mothered two children with Devlyn, playing her role as mother and wife and her other role as spy for the Daylights. Kirios, on the other hand, was growing despondent. He had no idea how to
proceed. Atia was supposed to mother the half-Daylight half-Midnight child. And there had been no sign of that eventuality so far.

  Then one momentous day, Saffron had come to him and told him about her mistress, Marion, and the affair Marion recently had with a member of a small lykan pack. Saffron felt sure there was something about this pack, something important, and since her instincts had always run true, Kirios listened attentively. She told Kirios of their Alpha, Mikhail, how special and strong he was. He had an aura. At her description, Kirios smirked; if it’d been three hundred years before, Kirios would’ve put it down to the fact that Saffron was susceptible to a handsome face, but she’d been gravely hurt by a warlock since then and was frosty to almost every man she encountered. So Kirios believed her and set about planning a meeting between Atia and Mikhail. He knew what he had to ask of them was cold and clinical and completely degrading. But if it would bring an end to the war?

  Sighing in remembrance, Kirios leaned against a tree, staring at the girl in her room. Perhaps it was his fault. He’d pushed Atia into the decision, settling her anxiety by using mesmerism. He’d never done that to one of his own before. With Saffron’s help, Kirios managed to convince them to sleep with one another.

  But after a few years of arranged meetings between them, no child was conceived. Kirios’s frustration was the least of their problems. Devlyn was not as naive as Kirios would have liked. He was a jealous husband and had been tracking Atia’s movements through faeries, despite no sign of duplicity in her trace. By the time Kirios got wind of the information and warned Atia and Mikhail … it was too late. Mikhail, without giving the details, warned his pack, Pack Errante, but Atia panicked. She killed Mikhail, assuming that Devlyn would have mercy on her. He slaughtered her anyway.

  His eyes glazed over with the memories. So much loss. And all for nothing.

  Or so he had thought.

  When it felt as if it was time to give up and give in, Saffron came to him with the news that one of the members of Pack Errante had arrived home with a magik he believed to be a member of the Daylight Coven. Saffron knew the girl was Atia and Devlyn’s daughter, Adriana; she was there to infiltrate the pack under her father’s orders. His instincts told him to let Adriana’s seduction play out, ordering Saffron to keep quiet.