Page 82 of Fated In Blood

Riordan’s eyes bore deeply into me and the hair on the back of my neck stood up as the ward he’d put around my thoughts fell away. I felt lighter without that smothering cold, but more vulnerable, too.

There was safety in his protection, and I liked knowing my thoughts were safe.

“Since Laurent Made Blake and myself, and by extension you, none of us can directly harm him.” His gaze was steady when it met mine. “Not without someintervention. Like an ancient dagger that may or may not exist.”

A dark sense of premonition rolled through me when his words clicked into place. After all the dancing around, this had never been about my skills. Tonight’s little performance was a different kind of test. To see how much Silverwood blood ran in my veins.

“I can’t.” I shook my head. “Ican’t, Riordan. If you’re asking the question, then you already know I can’t do this.”

“Freedom has a price, Evangeline,” he murmured sadly. “And this is mine. We need the Harpe Dagger from your family’s vault. The Silverwoods only let a few select family membersinto their inner circle, training them to be slayers. You have the training, Silver, which means your blood is keyed to open the Vault.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Once Malachi arrives, we’ll only have a few days before Tyrell figures out how to break the blood oath he swore to my sire. Once he breaks the oath, Blake and I are as good as dead, and so is anyone loyal to us. When we’re all dead, there will be nobody standing between him and Thorndale’s citizens.”

“There has to be a way.” I frantically threw out every idea that came to me. “Poison, silver nitrate, wolfsbane…stab him in the fucking heart with an ash stake coated in vervain.”

“He’s an Ancient, Silver. We’ve tried to kill him a dozen ways and failed,” Riordan explained patiently. “We need that weapon, and you’re going to retrieve it for us. In return, I will get your sister away from Tyrell and give you the resources to go wherever you wish.”

“Not good enough. My family will hunt us to the ends of the earth.”

“They’re already hunting you,” Blake snapped, reappearing in the circle nastier than ever, and his accusation had me spinning to face him and his shadowy magic, which seemed even darker.

“That’s why you’re so good at hiding, at staying hidden.” He plucked my jacket off the tree limb, holding it between two pinched fingers as panic raced through me. “I went down to Virginia, little slayer, and discovered something very interesting, indeed.”

Oh no.

Please, please don’t,I prayed. I’d gone to such lengths to bury my past, the last thing I wanted was for him to lay my fucked-up history out for everyone to pick apart.

“You had no right to poke around in my life.” Fear—true fear—washed through me. “If you drew my family here, if they have any idea where I am…” My voice trailed off into a hiss of air.

“Your mother ran, didn’t she? She took you and your sister and she ran. My guess is, she only took you along because you had the skills to protect them, to stay one step ahead of your family. But you couldn’t stay ahead forever, little slayer. They caught up to you eventually, didn’t they?”

Cruelty twisted his gloating smile into something ugly. “Not the vampires, but your own family.”

I forced myself to keep breathing, to not launch myself at him, my eyes stinging as I tried not to double over from the memories, the air in my lungs too sharp.

No, my greatest enemy had never been vampires.

My father and uncles had tracked us to a little town in southern Indiana, cornered my mother in front of our tiny, run-down house, cut off her head, then burned our home down around us.

Fragments of that night slammed into me—the reek of so much blood, my mother’s horrified gaze staring at nothing, the searing heat of the flames as I dragged Angel out the back door and into the woods. The next few hours when we’d been hunted like dogs.

I’d been happy in that house.

Honestly, genuinely happy, and they’d stolen that from me, too.

“My guess is, your mother died protecting you, told you to take your sister and run.” Blake paused, searching my face. From his faint smile, he found what he was looking for. “You managed to keep her safe until Tyrell snatched her up, right out from under your nose, almost like he knew right where to look. That must have stung, little slayer. Can’t even keep a promise to your?—”

One second, I was standing there, gripping my knives so tightly my hands cramped.

The next I was flying, the trees blurring around me, cold stinging my face as the rest of the world stood still. I reappeared right in front of Blake, knives already arcing downward, points headed directly for his heart. These weren’t silver, and they weren’t dipped in wolfsbane, but they would fucking hurt, and I wanted Blake tofucking bleed.

The point of the knife sliced through his shirt, pierced his skin…then of its own accord my wrist turned, the knife skating harmlessly off his rock-hard pec, the other one doing the same.

What the fuck? I’d never been so close and missed, and goddamn it, he deserved to fucking suffer. This was like something—or someone—had intervened.

I glared suspiciously at Riordan who flashed his hands. “That wasn’t me, but you dematerialized. I’ve never seen a newly turned vampire dematerialize before; I didn’t think it was possible.”

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