Chapter Twenty-Four
Jonathan drained his sixth bottle of wine, then hurled it across the cellar, not caring when it hit a wooden pillar and shattered.
He’d taken Felicity to his bed, hoping that slaking his lust might dim the intensity of his desire, but he’d failed.
Not only did he still long for her, but he sensed something else had taken root in his heart.
A sensation as familiar as it was unpleasant.
Love.
A desperate, all-consuming love that eclipsed by far what he’d felt for Marguerite, the woman who had saved his life and been the center of his world for decades.
He pressed his palms, sticky from spilled wine, over his face.
This was the exact reason he’d avoided searching for his fated mate.
Love burned hotter than any forge and consumed anything in its path, no matter how dear.
Already, the places in his heart where Marguerite had lived had been scorched to earth.
Her familiar disapproving glare faded, replaced by Felicity’s flushed cheeks.
There was no stopping it.
His throat was parched. He patted the wine rack beside him until he found another dusty bottle and was in the process of prying the cork free with his teeth when he heard rapid footfalls descending the steps to the basement.
“There you are!” Felicity cried.
She launched into a rapid speech, but he was too distracted by the wisps of hair that floated away from her head to listen.
He didn’t want to be happy to see her but couldn’t help it.
When she was near, his skin warmed and his heart tried to pound its way out of his chest. He imagined leaping to his feet and carrying her over his shoulder to his bedchamber to continue where they’d left off.
“Jonathan?”
He blinked twice, and the world swam into focus. She was on her knees in front of him, with one hand on his thigh. “I found the vampire responsible for the fledglings. It’s using the house next to the hunter base as a haven.”
He almost burst into laughter. Typical Marguerite, using the hunters’ own spell that disguised their base to her advantage.
That explained why he’d never been able to find her.
Years of searching for his maker, and it was a hunter who’d told him where she was hiding.
Another in a long train of fortuitous events that he suspected was anything but coincidence.
Marguerite had always been prone to nudging the pieces on the board when he wasn’t paying attention.
Felicity crawled closer. “Come with me. This vampire is out of control. We have to bring her to justice before she kills anyone else.”
“There will be no justice.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
He smacked the floor. “Marguerite is my maker, Felicity. Everything that has happened has been her doing. It doesn’t matter that she killed your parents.
” He was rambling, but he couldn’t stop.
“She could slaughter a thousand humans, and I wouldn’t be able to raise a hand against her.
I could no more hurt her than stab myself through the heart. ”
“H-How long have you known?” Felicity whispered.
What was left but to tell her the truth? “I suspected after the attack at the fountain.”
She splayed her hand on her chest. “All this time. You knew your maker was the vampire I was searching for all this time, and you didn’t tell me?”
It hurt to say the words, knowing she would hate him, but he could not stop himself. “Why would I tell you anything? I’m a vampire, and you’re a hunter. We’ll never be anything other than enemies.”
Her jaw trembled. “I thought…” She shook her head. “Obviously, I was mistaken.” She scuttled backward and said in a cold voice, “I apologize for interrupting your rest, Mr. Drake.” Then she fled up the stairs.
He clenched his jaw. He would not chase after her and apologize. If he held back his emotions and refused to acknowledge them, eventually, they’d fade.
The bottle in his hands was oddly warm. He turned it around.
The glass was deep brown, and the label had long ago worn away, leaving only faint smudges that gave no hint about what might have been held inside.
It reminded him of Marguerite. Before she’d abandoned them, his maker had withdrawn into herself, spending most of her time locked in her room with her journal.
The few times she’d ventured out, she’d donned a heavy veil that had obscured her features.
He suspected it had been an attempt to make her eventual departure easier, but being unable to see what she was so carefully holding inside had only frustrated him.
He popped the cork, tilted the bottle to his mouth, and drank.
The bitter liquid contained bits of a sticky substance that caught on his teeth and made him gag.
He spat it out and then confirmed what he’d suspected: the wine was full of sediment.
After tossing it aside, he rose unsteadily to his feet.
Marguerite had manipulated events from the shadows for long enough. It was time to tear her veil away.
When he reached the house where Felicity had said Marguerite was hiding and kicked down the door, he expected to find his maker inside, cackling gleefully.
Instead, she was curled around the bleeding body of a street urchin.
Her beautiful, black hair was streaked through with silver, her sharp cheekbones were so prominent that he could almost see each of the individual bones in her face, and when she looked at him, there was no recognition in her eyes.
“Marguerite?” he asked, even though he didn’t expect a response.
Whatever had happened to her in the years since he had seen her last, it had taken its toll.
She was no longer the vampire she had once been.
The image of her he’d held in his mind shattered, and with it a noose that had been wrapped tightly around his heart since she’d vanished slipped away.
The wriggling child in his maker’s arms kicked its feet, striking Marguerite in the cheek and causing a gash to open. She recoiled but did not release her grip on the poor urchin. Blood trickled down her face in scarlet rivulets.
“It’s me,” he said as he approached her. “Let the boy go.”
Something flickered in her eyes. “J-Jon?”
“Yes!” he cried. “That’s me. I’m Jonathan.”
She wasn’t completely gone. There was something left of her.
She blinked several times. “You’re here. That means… Did it work? Did you form the mating bond?”
“No.” He didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t lie to his maker.
She screwed up her face. “Then I have failed.” Her head lolled to the side. “I am so tired, Jonathan. I fear I no longer have the strength to do what must be done.”
He’d come intending to demand answers, but this frail creature was nothing like the cruel yet beautiful woman he loved. Whatever had happened to her over the previous several decades had changed her for the worse.
She curled around her young victim. “There is still a way. A thread that would cause a new weaver to take my place.” She whipped out a hand and caught Jonathan’s wrist. “You must kill me.”
“No!”
She squeezed so hard, he heard his bones grinding. “You must.”
“Please,” he whispered. “Why are you doing this?”
He’d finally found her. Losing her again so soon was unthinkable.
She closed her eyes. “The pain is too much. Were I to live, the tapestry would unravel, and my children would suffer. I’ve felt the agony of losing a mate, Jonathan. It is worse than you can possibly imagine.”
“What?” A hollow pit opened in his stomach. All those years wishing she would be his fated mate. His nest siblings had thought she’d delayed her search to care for them. He’d been a fool not to realize there had been another reason.
“My Bertrand died before I made Marcus,” she said.
“The threads of my mate’s life were impenetrable to my gift.
Not knowing his fate terrified me and I…
I pushed him away.” Her voice cracked. “He walked into the sun. The pain of his passing broke me, but I was too strong to die. I made Marcus and the rest of you, desperately hoping for another chance at mating.”
His heart ached knowing how she’d suffered. It must have been awful creating fledgling after fledgling, hoping each would be the one that healed the crack in her soul.
The urchin in her arms spasmed, scoring her arms with its newly formed claws.
“No!” he cried, but it was too late. The starving fledgling latched its mouth on to the wound it had made and drank. Marguerite did not even struggle, only bent her head and crooned soothing words.
Jonathan grabbed a jagged length of wood from the floor and thrust it through the fledgling’s chest, turning it to dust.
Marguerite uttered an inhuman screech and began to convulse. He gathered her up and brushed the hair away from her face. No matter what it took, he would not stop until she was restored to sanity, even if she would not have done the same for him.
“You will recover,” he said, willing himself to believe it. He’d take her to Helena. His sister would know what to do. The codex hadn’t provided the cure he’d sought, but it might yet prove useful.
“No,” Marguerite said. Then her eyes flickered blue, and even though he knew what was coming, he could do nothing to stop it.
Her mouth opened, and the words that came out rang with command. “Plunge the stake through my heart.”
His body shook, but the chunk of wood remained firmly in his grasp. There was no crucifix around his neck, but he could no more disobey a command from his maker than he could have resisted the orders given to him by Felicity before she’d freed him of the crucifix.
His arm jerked forward, and the stake slipped between her ribs.
As she lay in his arms, the light fading from her eyes, she smiled and whispered, “Thank you.”
Then she dissolved into dust.
The pain that rippled through his body was unlike anything he’d ever felt. He opened his mouth to scream, and the cry that tore out of throat was more animal than human. When he came back to himself, he was lying on the floor on his back.
The basement window was open, but he didn’t care. When the sunlight came, he would let it scorch his flesh, and then his existence would end. There would be no more drinking Marcus’s increasingly foul concoctions or feeling like the sand in the hourglass of his life was slipping away.
He would let the sun take him, and then it would be over.