Page 51 of Across the Sapphire Sea
“If you insist, but Valeri.” Lajos’s entire demeanor changed. Gone was the hardness and barely contained power. Vanished were the intense gazes and threats. His face softened, his expression turned pleading, his amber eyes earnest. “Leave Elias with me.”
Valeri’s gut revolted at the thought. “Never!”
“You must,” Lajos insisted. “He’s an innocent in this and does not deserve the consequences you would thrust upon him.”
“Elias stays with me.” Valeri pounded a fist to his chest.
“Even if that means he dies with you?”
“No one is going to die!” Valeri would have loved to tell Lajos about Aella. About the powers Laurence and his whelp had cultivated. That his group was much stronger than Lajos realized, but he would not be provoked into tipping his hand. He had the advantage and intended to keep it.
“You’re always so sure of yourself,” Lajos countered. “Your arrogance will be your undoing. And your child’s. Please consider my offer. I will protect Elias from you.”
“Not for me?Fromme.” Valeri scoffed and strode past him to the exit. “Just get us an audience. And keep your filthy hands off my fledgling.”
“You’ll regret this. Leave him where he’ll be sa—”
“Elias is mine.” Valeri slammed the door behind him.
* * *
Elias, Two Years Ago
Over the following year, Elias tagged along as Valeri dragged them from Rovaniemi to Kuusamo to Kitka and back on no less than four occasions. At one point over the summer they spent six weeks endlessly hopping from one nomadic Breodun tribe to another. Elias learned to sleep in the ground, in caves, and at abandoned farmsteads. How to track horses that had wandered off during the day, even how to speak a little of the Breodun language. Part adventure, part drudgery, the constant wandering had begun to wear on his nerves.
When Valeri first told Elias about his search for a group of ancient vampires, Elias had thought the quest intimidating. At one hundred and sixty-three years old, Elias thought Valeri was ancient enough already and had trouble wrapping his mind around vampires who’d seen a millennia or more come and go. He wasn’t sure tracking them down was a good idea, especially since they didn’t seem to want to be found, but he’d learned not to pick that particular battle with Valeri.
Besides, Elias had been so caught up in discovering the world around him with his new vampiric senses and with Valeri’s seemingly unlimited supply of wealth, he couldn’t bring himself to care much about a stuffy old court of ancients. If the quest made Valeri happy, then Elias would endure it.
But he was beginning to think the pursuit was hopeless, and worse, it wasn’t making Valeri happy anymore, quite the opposite. His sire’s frustration increased with each dead end, and Elias bore the brunt of his bad moods.
They sat together in a small clearing in the middle of the forest outside the village of Kuusamo. Under the glimmering greens and purples of the arctic lights and beside a fire Valeri had made for them, Elias felt the mood might be right for the conversation he’d been hesitant to start.
He watched Valeri closely. Valeri was leaning against a fallen tree trunk, his legs stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankle, expression open, content, shoulders relaxed. This was as good a time as any.
“Valeri,” Elias began.
Valeri turned his affectionate gaze on him, a fondness present in his stare with something deeper underneath, a lust that could be awoken with even the most subtle of hints. Elias loved that about him. How easy it was to go from sitting by the fire fully clothed to naked and writhing if either of them had so much as a whim. But tonight, Elias was after answers.
He knew rumors had led Valeri to Lappland, and that those rumors had been confirmed by Lajos. Valeri suspected these vampires to be twice the age of the oldest southern vampire, and he thought the ancients held some secret that allowed them to live so long without going mad. Valeri sought this secret and coveted the respect such a discovery would bring.
But when Elias pressed for further detail, Valeri became evasive. If this endless search was to be his life, Elias deserved the entire truth.
“Why did you leave the other vampires? What made you come here?” These were questions he’d asked before, but tonight he wouldn’t allow for Valeri’s excuses.
Valeri sighed, probably annoyed at the prospect of this conversation again. “You already know these answers. I left to seek a cure.”
This was where Elias had spotted the lie, though he’d never called Valeri on it before. “No. You’ve told me of hearing rumors that ancient vampires lived here, but you heard those rumors in Turku. You’d already fled north. You didn’t come here to find a cure, you came here and then discovered a purpose. Why did you leave to begin with?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Valeri began to close off. Before he could stop the line of inquiry entirely, Elias crawled to him and put a hand on his knee.
“Please, Valeri. I know there is something you aren’t telling me. It hurts that you keep such secrets.”
Valeri dropped a hand on top of Elias’s. “It’s impossible to refuse you when you say it like that.”
Elias squeezed his knee gently. “Then don’t refuse me.”
A sigh marked Valeri’s irritation, but he relented. “I didn’t leave of my own free will. I was banished by a group of vampires called The Dozen.”
