9. Aurora
Aurora
M y eyes opened wide. “What does a Cure have to do with a bunch of vampires?”
Mac shook his head. “I don’t know. The vampiric curse cannot be broken. The only cure is death, so what would this man be able to tell us?” He glanced at the wall, avoiding my gaze.
The flames no longer danced in his eyes when he looked back at me. I searched his face for any other hint of emotion when realization dawned on me. I knit my brows together, searching his too-perfect face, taking in how it resembled chiseled marble sculpted to perfection. His body, too, showed absolute symmetry and beauty—an unattainable flawlessness reserved for one creature alone.
My voice lowered. “Why did you follow me down that tunnel?”
He bit his lip. “I told you; I knew you would likely be hurt.”
I thought back to his hands when I was first waking up, when the cold feeling of death seeped into my skin. How my ring burned on my finger as though it was consuming something when he spoke to me, and the extreme calm his voice evoked in me before my ring sprung to life. The burn of magic being consumed—his compulsive magic trying to take over my thoughts. I froze as the realization crashed over me. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
His face twisted in confusion. “One of who?”
“A vampire. That’s how you knew this was a sacred space for their family.” My heart thudded as I silently prayed he would deny my accusation.
Mac sighed and looked away. Silence hung in the thick, smoky air until he finally drew in a sharp breath. “Yes,” he answered, his head hung low as though it were his single greatest shame.
My eyes widened as fear surged, causing my breath to quicken. What the hell? I tried to push away from him and scrambled backward, but anytime I put weight on my ankle, pain shot through me. “Stay back.” I whimpered through the pain.
He reached his hand out and placed it on my arm. “I will not hurt you.” That icy feeling crept into my soul again, but his gaze was soft, almost longing, the gaze of a would-be lover over a bloodthirsty monster.
My heart fluttered, and I forced myself to look away as a mixture of fear and desire flooded my body, part of me desperate to get away and another relieved he was here with me. This time, there was no burning in my ring. Wasn’t he compelling me now?
This made no sense. Why did I trust him? Why wasn’t I preparing to defend myself from an inevitable death? He didn’t move under my watchful gaze. His face relaxed, and his pupils dilated as he leaned toward me.
“Don’t look at me that way,” I said, throwing sternness into my voice. “Just don’t. You’re not human; you don’t feel.”
His voice softened to match his gaze. “Who told you we don’t feel just because we aren’t human?”
My bitter laughter echoed around us. “Everyone knows that.” I tilted my head as I narrowed my eyes. I wanted to hear that he would never have genuine feelings, that there was no hope he would care for me so I could forget the last few hours and return to my coven.
“I would tell you that you were wrong, but you wouldn’t believe me anyway,” he said with a shrug before folding his legs to his chest.
A sadness in his words caused my heart to ache for him, an openness I never expected in one of his kind that drew me to him. “You’re right. I probably wouldn’t. What can someone who gave up their humanity and family know about emotions? You’d have to feel nothing to do that.”
Mac wrapped his arms around his legs and bit his cheek as though struggling with my words. “You know little about us, don’t you?”
I pressed my lips together, pretty sure the question had a double meaning. But it wasn’t one I could find. “We’ve learned a lot over the years.”
“But not nearly enough.” He sighed.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You,” he growled, throwing his arm out toward me. “You think you know everything when in fact you know nothing. I had a family once. One I cherished beyond all else.” He grabbed a stone from the ground and twisted it in his hands, his shoulders hunched as they rose and fell before his voice softened again. “I loved them more than you could imagine. We had lived in harmony for eight hundred years, going this way and that but always coming back together.”
My chest tightened at his words. Could it be that this vampire had a genuine family he cared about and not just a faction? “What happened?” I forced the words out after a few minutes of silence.
He clenched and unclenched his jaw before throwing the stone at the flaming log. Sparks erupted in a display reminiscent of fireworks. “Nothing I want to talk about. But they are gone, all of them. And my only chance at getting them back is hearing whatever the descendant of Donovan O’Cillian has to say.” He pointed at the lineage still on my lap.
I laid my hand on the cover. It didn’t matter how human he said his emotions were or how his words made my heart feel, this was what I had been sent to find. It had been stolen from my coven—the reason I was here.
“I can’t let you take it.” My voice strained through the words, my heart torn between wanting to help and be free of him.
He chuckled, the sound echoing off the walls in a beautiful chorus. “I could compel it from you.”
“You tried to compel me when you were waking me, didn’t you?” I needed to know if the burning had been my ring protecting me from his magic, as I suspected.
He nodded, and his lips curled slightly. “I guess your mind wasn’t in the right space for the compulsion to work. You kept fighting me.”
“I guess.” I smirked. There was no way I was telling him he couldn’t compel me. But that meant every flutter of my heart had been from me being drawn to him—his beautiful appearance and tortured soul. I gritted my teeth together, trying to snap out of it. I needed to take this lineage back to Aunt Amara—back to the coven.
“Please, Rory.” Mac’s eyes searched mine. “I may not know exactly what the Cure will tell me or what he can do, but he is the only sliver of hope I have to getting my family back. I’m following an impossible trail of clues with no one to help me, and that lineage is my only lead. I must find Donovan’s descendant, the Cure of today.”
I shook my head. “There is more at play here than I can tell you. Plus, the marking on the cover matches my pendant. Someone stole this from us, and it’s time for it to be returned.”
Mac nodded, his brows knitted together. After a few minutes, he spoke. “What if we’re on the same side?”
His words echoed in my mind. Was there ever a time in history when witches and vampires worked together? The Coven of the Blood attempted to stay neutral until we had aligned with the hunters. How could I ever team up with a vampire? It went against everything I was taught. They were inhuman, impossible for a witch to kill with magic alone, and their strength and ability to heal too great. One vampire already had the ability to withstand a hunter’s arrow, and if he learned how to share that power with others, the vampire race would be impossible for us to keep in check.
A vampire’s strength.
I tilted my head. “If you’re a vampire, you have no problem getting out of this cavern.”
Mac’s smile reflected in the firelight as he nodded. “I can jump that cliff in the blink of an eye. And yes, I can take you with me.”
“Why didn’t you mention it earlier?”
He knit his brow. “When you thought I was a normal human?”
I smirked. “You have a point.”
He pushed at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “I planned to wait for you to sleep and then get you out.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Had my discovery meant he was going to leave me? “And now?”
He shrugged. “Once we get out of here, what will happen?”
The air filtered through my nostrils as I filled my lungs, seeking time by drawing in as much oxygen as I could. He could leave me here—trapped—never looking back. He could also kill me in a heartbeat. But he could have done so at any time, yet he hadn’t. He hadn’t made a single threatening move, and even now, he was asking for my help.
“Aurora—” my mother’s voice filled my head as I closed my eyes, searching for guidance. “You have what you were sent to find.”
I opened my eyes, Mac’s soft gaze waiting patiently for an answer. Patience, caring, love—all emotions I had been taught a vampire would never have. The sooner we got out of here, the faster I got away from him and the feelings he caused.
“A vampire has been killing hunters, and he always wins. He’s immune to their arrows. Even with the coven’s magic, the hunters have been unable to contain him or even find him before he attacks. He has taken over the immortal powers in Charleston. The High Priestess Regent had a vision that this will give us the upper hand.”
Mac flinched before turning away. I tilted my head, taking in his every move. What did he know? He closed his eyes, immersed in his thoughts, before looking into mine. “Your coven wants to kill him?”
I bit my lip. “Our coven needs to restore the balance. If that vampire manages to replicate his power, teach it to others, or create others with it, the vampires will become stronger than the hunters or the coven are able to contain, and the world as we know it will change forever.”
Mac’s face twisted. “What if I can help you find him?”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Why would you want to help me?”
“Only one vampire among us fits your description. Many of our kind would be happy to see him destroyed.” Mac’s words were nearly devoid of emotions before he continued, his voice soft. “With him gone, I might get my family back.”
I tilted my head. “How does finding this vampire help you bring your family together?”
“He is why my family has been torn apart. If I can help you stop him—”
“This is witch business, not vampire business. Why would we involve your kind?”
He pressed his lips into a line and stood. “Because without my kind, you will never get close enough.” He pointed at my lap. “How did your family lose that lineage in the first place? How do you not know—” He turned away from me with a huff.
“Not know what?” I spat back in anger. Who knew how old the vampire who stood before me was. He knew history I had only hoped to learn when I started training, but even then, only what the coven passed down. Was there more to this than even our history held?
“It’s a story for another day.” He turned back, looking down at me. “You had to dowse to find the lineage, meaning you did not know where it was, and you told me you were here because of a vision, which means someone hid all of this from you.”
I shook my head, refusing to acknowledge the coven was two steps behind right now. Something was missing, something didn’t add up, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “There is no way I can bring a vampire into this.”
“Then you will fail at what you have started. The only way you can finish this is with us working together.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fate needs to rethink forcing a witch and a vampire to work together.”
As I said the words out loud, my chest tightened, and my heart sank. As soon as Mac got us out of there, I needed to be free of him and how he made me feel.