For the Power (For the Blood Book 2) Read online

  His story, as fantastical as it sounded, made sense. He could have killed me while I’d been unconscious and taken the key and run, but he hadn’t. He’d said over and over that he meant me no harm.

  I blew out a breath. “Why you? Why do you think the Vladul will follow you if you have the key?”

  He locked gazes with me. “Because I’m the last of the royal bloods.”

  “I thought you said Malcolm killed them all.”

  “He did. All except me. I was just a child, and if he wanted the Vladul to follow him, he needed to show a softer side, a side that said, of course he wasn’t a monster, and so he picked me, the queen’s sole heir, to live.”

  He was Vladul royalty?

  “The rest of the royal bloodline, first cousins and second cousins and everyone in between, were purged. He raised me as his own. He kept me safe, and he used me as a symbol of the new order. But no more. My people deserve to be free. We’re not monsters, and I won’t let Malcolm continue to force us to commit atrocious acts.”

  “The key will give you power over the stronghold,” Sage reiterated.

  “Yes,” Elias said.

  “You can lock Malcolm out. But what about his legion?” Sage said. “They could hunt you down and take the key off you. You’re just one Vladul.”

  The djinn was asking the very questions that were going through my mind.

  Elias wasn’t fazed, though. He smirked. “Am I?”

  He had another ace up his sleeve. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I learned from a master of deception, a man who stood by my mother’s side for centuries and lied to her face while building a resistance. I learned that you have to bide your time and prepare.”

  The penny dropped. “You have a resistance?”

  He nodded. “We are vast, and we are everywhere in the Foundation, but until I saw the key around your neck the final piece of the puzzle had been missing. Our coup would have been a huge risk with technology at the ready to smash us down.” His gaze fell to my throat. “The key can change everything. Once I have control of the Foundation, the human and supernatural prisoners can be free. We can start over, really start over, and build a new world.”

  “Are you buying this?” Logan asked me.

  Ash signed rapidly, and Logan made a sound of exasperation.

  “Eva?” Logan asked me again.

  “What did Ash say?”

  “I want to know what you think first.”

  Ash was looking at me too. I could feel his attention warm on my face, but I kept my eyes on Elias.

  “I think you’re telling me the truth. I think your plan and intentions are solid. But I can’t give you the key.”

  He sagged in his seat and tucked in his chin. “I was really hoping we could resolve this amicably, that you’d understand. But it looks like I’m just going to have to take it.”

  He exploded out of the chair and headed straight for me. Logan and Ash both leapt to intercept him, but he threw them both off, intent on getting to me. Jace pulled me out of the way, and Sage took my place, colliding with the Vladul. They tussled, and damn if they weren’t head to head. Logan was back on his feet and so was Ash; they grabbed Elias, pinning his arms behind his back, but he slipped out of their grasp, moving so fast he was impossible to track. Jace yelped and then Elias had me in a throat hold, my back against his chest, breath hot in my ear.

  “Move one step and I’ll crack her neck,” Elias said.

  Ash growled deep in his throat, and Logan’s lip curled in a snarl, but Sage was studying the Vladul carefully. He was reading his colors. I arched a brow, and he shook his head infinitesimally.

  Elias’s grip was firm, tight but not painful. “You won’t hurt me. That isn’t who you are. If it was, you’d have killed me already.”

  “Damn you.” He released me and shoved me away.

  I slowly turned to face him, and it was just the two of us, staring each other down. He could have escaped at any time, he could have knocked Logan out by the cages and taken the key then. So why? Why hadn’t he? There was more to his story, more to him. He waited, allowing me to process these facts. He was royalty, he was a new hope, and he had information in his head about the inside of the Foundation. He was essential, and if he wanted, he had the speed to rip the key from my neck and run, and yet he remained stationary, his gaze fixed on my face, my lips, my eyes, my hair. Heat crawled up my neck.

  I swallowed. “If you really believe in changing things, in bringing down this Malcolm, then you’ll leave the key with me, at least for now.”

  He frowned. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because the key unlocks the cure to the virus. A cure that could change everything.”

  His mouth parted in shock. “A cure … That’s where you’re headed? To get this cure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dammit, Eva,” Logan said. “Why not share our secret bunker location too. I’m sure the Vladul would love to drop in for a fucking visit.”

  I ignored him, focusing on Elias, focusing on controlling my erratic pulse because this was big. The cure, him, the whole backstory and the possibilities. If we could work together.

  Elias was considering. “I’m coming with you.”

  Yes!

  “Like hell you are.” Kira stood in the doorway.

  I turned to face her, but a figure rose up behind her—Nate in his furs, all steely-eyed and intense.

  “The Vladul belongs to us,” Nate said. “He owes us a blood debt, and the souls of our dead will be avenged.”

  Oh, shit. I held up my hands. “Look, this is bigger than us. Elias knows the Foundation inside out. He’s a walking schematic to that place, and once we have the cure, he’ll be invaluable to our infiltration.”

  Okay, so Elias hadn’t agreed to any of this, but fuck it, he’d just have to go along with me.

  “First-name basis now?” Kira’s tone was laced with disgust. “What happened to the interrogation?”

  “There’s no need for force when the interrogee cooperates,” Jace said softly.

  Kira’s lips tightened. “Get the information you need. That was the deal.”

  “The information we need is in his head,” Sage said. “It’s not something we can simply extract and take with us.”

  “Then he’s useless.”

  She was being pigheaded. “Seriously? Are you not listening to anything we’re saying?”

  It was Nate who responded. “Two Claws are dead, and the Feral …” His tone dropped as if in reverence. “We were forced to slaughter them all.”

  So that was what this was about? “Well, then maybe you shouldn’t have fucking kept them caged up less than ten minutes from the camp.”

  He flinched and turned his hot glare on me. “Are you intimating that this is my fault?”

  “I’m intimating that you’re partially to blame. It was a dumb move, despite your reasons, and what Elias did was seize an opportunity to get what he needed to save his people. Everyone is fucking doing what they need to do to protect their own, and it’s about time we stopped and focused on the bigger picture.” I stepped away from Elias. “You want to kill him, then fine. I won’t stand in your way. Kill him, but it won’t bring back the dead. What it will do is end our best chance of infiltrating the Foundation.”

  Nate’s eyes were narrowed, his jaw working.

  “Nate?” Kira asked.

  Nate closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “Take him. Take him and get out of my camp. Now.”

  “Nate?” Kira looked shocked.

  “Get them to where they need to be, Kira.” Nate swept from the tent.

  Kira bowed her head. “You have no idea how much that just cost him. His son and his wife were two of the Feral we were just forced to kill.”

  My heart sank. “I’m sorry. I truly am, and trust me, I don’t excuse what Elias did, but I can’t deny that given the same circumstances, I would have done the same.”

  She fixed her gaze on Elias. “You better
be worth it, Vladul. One false move and I will end you.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Get your shit together and meet me at the gates in ten minutes,” she snapped.

  Relief flooded through me at her exit, and I turned to face Elias. “Let us down and she won’t be the one sticking a knife in your throat.”

  Was that amusement in his gaze? “I won’t betray you, Eva.”

  Damn, my name on his lips sounded way too intimate. I dismissed him in favor of Ash. “I’ll grab our stuff from the tent and meet you at the gates.” I looked to Jace. “We should call Noah and give him an update too.”

  “I tried,” Jace said. “He’s not picking up.”

  In that case, we’d just have to hope we’d made the right decision. The cure was mere hours away, and we were traveling with the enemy.

  Logan found me in the tent a few minutes later.

  I sighed. “I know; you think I’m making a mistake.”

  He gathered the weapons. “I don’t know, Eva. My powers don’t work on Vladul or other Fangs, otherwise I’d look into his head and make him spill all his secrets.”

  “I think he’s telling us the truth, but I’m in no doubt that there’s stuff he’s hiding.”

  “I’m sorry,” Logan said.

  I faced him. “What for? For saving my life?”

  He offered me a lopsided smile. “No. Not sorry about that.” His expression sobered. “I’m sorry for storming out earlier, for not getting to you sooner, and … I’m sorry for being so sharp with you.”

  Wow. “I’ll take it.” I strapped my sword on. “I get that you just want to protect Ash. I get that I’m an unwanted variable in your world. But I’m not going anywhere, not if I can help it, so it would be nice if we could just … get along.”

  Damn, why was my heart beating so fast. Could he hear it? Of course he could.

  His brow furrowed slightly, and he reached up to brush his thumb lightly along my cheek. “Get along … But Eva, don’t you get it? That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  He cared.

  Shit. He really cared.

  The pulse in my throat was fluttering like mad, and breathing was suddenly too hard.

  His throat bobbed, and he dropped his hand from my cheek and took a step back.

  My breath whooshed out of my lungs. “We should get going. We have a cure to get.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After the long journey on foot, after the fighting and the pain, the van drive was alien and disconcerting. I sat cushioned between Ash and Sage. Jace and Logan sat opposite me, and Elias was tucked at the back overseen by Kira. The Claw refused to take her eyes off him.

  There was no need for the vigilance. Sage would warn me if Elias’s colors shifted, if he intended to do harm, run, or be deceitful. It was strange, because when he’d been speaking it had been as if I could hear the honesty wrapped around each syllable.

  He wasn’t the threat. Malcolm was. And we were almost at the first stop to victory. Apprehension skittered across my skin like a colony of ants, and what ifs rose up in my mind. What if we were wrong? What if we were too late? What if the cure wasn’t a cure at all but a vaccine to prevent infection like Jace had proposed?

  But what ifs would drive me crazy.

  Sage sandwiched my hand between his, and then ran his thumb over the back of mine soothingly. I sighed and forced my mind to let go and relax. My eyes drifted closed, and my head fell onto Ash’s hard shoulder; he shifted position to wrap an arm around me and pull me against his chest, and I had the rhythm of his heartbeat to lull me into sleep.

  The van rocked and bumped and dipped and my body drifted into a much-needed doze. But the world around me was still on alert, and the voices and sounds still trickled into my ears.

  “How much longer till we get to the coordinates?” Logan asked.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re going to be asking me if we’re there yet every few minutes,” Kira said.

  “No.” Logan’s tone was brusque. “I asked how long we had left on the journey.”

  Footsteps followed by the slide of metal on metal. “Carter, what’s our ETA?”

  “An hour out, Kira.”

  “There, you happy?”

  “Peachy.”

  Silence reigned, or had I slipped into a deeper sleep?

  “Eva?” Sage’s rumble of a voice. “We’re approaching our stop off now.”

  Sleep slipped away and energy flooded my body. We were here? I’d slept the whole way. The van ground to a halt, and Kira opened the side door. We piled out into the early morning light and stared at the building crowded by huge trees.

  The air was thinner here.

  “We’re up a mountain,” Sage explained. “The van almost didn’t make the steep drive. They didn’t make it easy to get to this place.”

  The building was squat and low to the ground. No windows but there were cameras high up, pointed down at us. They tracked our approach.

  “You think they’re on auto?” Logan asked.

  “Unlikely,” Jace said. “That would require power to have been left on for the past few decades. I don’t see a source of water here so not sure the power would be hydraulic.”

  “A generator?” Kira suggested.

  “It would have to be one heck of an epic generator, and there’d have to be someone here to man it.”

  Someone here? “Maybe there is.”

  “The generator at the Foundation is self-sustaining,” Elias said. “No maintenance required, as the fossil fuel that runs it is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The scientists that were at the Foundation when we took it said that it was a new source of energy, one that the government had been keeping under wraps.”

  Figured. There had been way too much the government had neglected to share with the general public.

  We began walking toward the doors. A scuffle behind me was followed by a thud and scrape. I turned to see Elias picking himself off the ground with Bates, one of Kira’s men, standing over him with a shit-eating grin on his face.

  Elias’s jaw was clenched in suppressed anger.

  I pushed past Carter to get to his comrade. “You serious?” I was toe to toe with the Claw. “You think that’s funny?”

  Bates’s expression morphed to disgust. “What? You want to take him into your little harem?”

  Heat crawled up my chest. “What if I do? Huh? You got a problem with that?”

  “He just tried to kill you.”

  “NO. No, he didn’t. If he had, I’d be dead. In fact, if he’d wanted to, he could have knocked you on your arse a second ago. If he wanted to, he could have fought off your guards at the camp and made a getaway. He’s a fucking Vladul. The first race. One of the first fucking vampires, and he’s royalty, you twat.”

  Bates flinched as if I’d spat in his face. Heck, maybe I had. “Touch him again and I won’t be responsible for his actions.” I turned away from him and pushed back to the front of the group. “He’s with us. He’s one of us. We’re no longer Claw, or Fang, Vladul or djinn, we’re a fucking team. Bigger picture, guys. Get with the program or piss off.”

  Bates muttered something.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Kira snapped. “Stay with the van. You too, Carter.”

  We reached the metal doors, closed tight against the outside world. No hand, no panel, no place for a key to go.

  “Um, how the fuck do we get in?” Logan asked the question on all our minds.

  I looked up at the camera fixed above the door, at the single red winking light. If someone was in there, watching, maybe they’d been waiting for Dad, for the key.

  A tug on the leather strap around my neck had the key visible. I held it up to the camera.

  “My name is Eva Williams. My father was Dr. Frederick Williams. He gave me this before he died, and I believe he wanted me to bring it here.”

  No one interrupted, and after I’d finished speaking, there was silence. The air was tense with anticipation. Long seconds ticked
by and nothing happened.

  “Dammit,” Kira said. “What no—”

  A clang and a whirr. The ground rumbled beneath our feet and the door began to slide open. My pulse sped up as an inky darkness bloomed beyond the doors.

  “Not empty after all,” Elias said.

  The door was halfway open when I stepped through. There was someone here, someone who’d been waiting for me.

  “Carter, keep tabs on the radio,” Kira said.

  The others entered at my back. Logan and Ash stepped up to flank me as we stood in the dark entranceway and then with a buzz and putter the lights came on. We were in a small, square room painted magnolia with the open door at our backs and a closed one in front of us. The door in front was metal but fit seamlessly into the wall. Airtight.

  “What is this?” Kira asked.

  I glanced up, noting the long vents in the ceiling. It was obvious what this room was for.

  “Decontamination chamber,” Elias said, beating me to it.

  He pointed to the vents, and his long-sleeved shirt tugged tight over his chest. What was that fabric? It seemed to mold to him like a second skin. Some kind of smart material maybe?

  The door behind us slid closed smoothly—eerie because it had taken ages to open.

  “I don’t like this.” Kira’s tone dipped low to communicate her disquiet.

  There was an ominous hiss and then the room was filled with a misty gas that coated my skin and invaded my airways.

  “It’s fine,” Elias said. “Don’t panic. They have this stuff at the Foundation too.”

  It lasted several seconds and then dissipated in favor of another drier gas which pelted us harshly. My hair whipped back, and my eyes closed instinctively against the assault.

  Then it was over, leaving me breathless and tingling.

  “Fuck.” Jace swept a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead and out of his eyes.

  “I think that’s it,” Elias said. “Whoever is inside should let us in now.”

  The door in front of us opened into another chamber, the same size as the previous one. There was a panel on the wall and a speaker high up in the crease of the ceiling and wall. No vents here, thank goodness.