“More than five centuries ago, a triad sealed most of the naturi from this world. They are trying to break through. We need your help to seal them again.”
“My help?” A nervous laugh escaped him and skittered under the table to hide. “What the hell can I do?”
“Tabor was part of that triad. He’s gone, but he made you. As part of the same bloodline, we think you can take his place in the triad.”
“And do what? Tabor was more than three thousand years old when he made me.” He stared wide-eyed at me, confident that I had lost my mind. I couldn’t blame him. Even though I’d said it, I was having trouble believing it myself. Thorne wasn’t a particularly strong nightwalker. He had probably stayed alive this long only because of Tabor’s protection and his own smarts.
“I don’t know. This wasn’t my idea. Jabari sent me to find you,” I admitted, frowning.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. Slumping back in the booth, he pushed the overturned mug with his index finger, making it rock. Any hopes he might have had about escaping me dissolved to dirty slush. He might have hoped to talk his way out of my grasp, but if an Elder had sent me, there was no escape. I would hunt him until I expired. And in a fight, he had no chance.
At that moment, a waitress in a tight black tank top brought over a tray laden with three mugs of ale. It was the dark type that reminded me more of motor oil than any liquid a human might actually want to imbibe. She leaned forward as she placed the mugs in front of each of us. Around her neck dangled a pentagram; she wasn’t the first one I’d seen in London wearing such an item.
“I thought you might want another pint before going on again,” she said, picking up Thorne’s empty glass. She shuffled away, squeezing between the band members who had come back over to the table.
“We got another set,” announced the man with a purple mohawk who had been playing the drums when we walked in. His brown eyes shifted to my face in an appraising manner, but I could also feel his anxiety. I was threatening his meal ticket.
“We have to go,” I said, drawing Thorne’s gaze back to my face.
“Y’got me,” he snapped. “I can’t outrun you. Let me finish this set before you take me to Hell.”
Frowning, I looked expectantly over at Danaus. He knew what I wanted to know, and I was getting sick of asking. The sooner the naturi were taken care of, the sooner I could go back to trying to kill him instead of depending upon him to watch my back. Danaus shook his head at me, his eyes narrowing.
“Fine. Go. Just a couple songs. It’s late,” I said, irritation clipping my words as I slid to my feet so I could let him out of the booth.
Avoiding Danaus’s gaze, I watched as Thorne quickly downed half of his beer. He slammed the glass mug down on the table, his face twisted in disgust. “Blast, that’s a nasty brew,” he groaned, then said nothing more as he slipped out of the booth. But as he turned to follow his band mates up to the stage, Thorne grabbed my right wrist. He gave my arm a little jerk, but I didn’t move. “Come on,” he said, motioning with his head for me to follow him up to the raised platform.
“I can’t sing.” A swell of panic rose up in my chest and I pulled against his grip, but he didn’t release me.
“You call this singing?” He laughed, his smile widening. Around us, the crowd was screaming and jumping as the other members of the band picked up their instruments. The shouting throbbed and crashed against the walls, threatening to topple the place. Their excitement was a live thing in that large room, pushing against me. Thorne stepped close, pressing his cool, bare chest against my arm. “Come up there. Show them what you are. It’s the next best thing.”
I looked down at his brown eyes, which were now glowing, the irises overwhelming all other color. He was riding the wave of their emotions, and for him it was the next best thing to actually feeding on them. The idea of standing on that stage and screaming into the microphone, purging all the anger I had carried around during the past few days, was tempting. But it would be more than that. I would bare my fangs to them, and those humans would scream for more. They would love me for being a nightwalker. Deep down, they would think I was a phony, but for a moment I wouldn’t be hiding.
“What were you before?” I asked suddenly.
Thorne cocked his head to the side, the glow vanishing from his eyes at the strange question. “Before Tabor?” I nodded. “I walked the boards at Drury Lane,” he said, smiling. For that sentence, the cockney accent disappeared. It was still British, but cultured and precise. Tabor always had snobbish tastes, so I imagined that Thorne had been born to a life of privilege and luxury. I wondered what his companions would think if they knew where he came from. Of course, that would all be moot once they discovered he was roughly two hundred years old.
“Go now before I change my mind,” I said, stepping away from him as I pulled my arm free. Sitting back down in the booth across from Danaus, I watched Thorne jump back on the stage. I wasn’t surprised. He’d been an actor before Tabor turned him. He had been accustomed to being the center of attention, pretending to be something he wasn’t. Watching him now, I wondered if I might have seen him during my brief visits to London during the late eighteenth century. At that time, there were only three theaters: Drury Lane, Hay-market, and Covent Gardens. On several occasions Drury Lane had played host to Edmund Keane, the preeminent actor of his day. And now the emaciated Thorne stood shrieking before a crowd of disillusioned teenagers.
I looked up to find Danaus watching me, his expression again unreadable. A part of me wished I could crawl around in his brain, wrapping myself around his thoughts. The longer he stayed with me, the more he saw of my world, and I wanted to look at it all again with the eyes of an outsider. There was so much I had grown numb to during my long existence. Before Sadira changed me, I’d marveled at her strength and power. I sat in awe of her, amazed at the sheer number of nightwalkers that came to her side and bowed to her. Even before I was reborn, I grew inured to the killing and torture. I had been a gift to those who pleased her and an instrument of torture for those who disappointed her.
With my maker still lingering in the background of my thoughts, I looked over at Tristan, whose interest was starting to make me extremely uncomfortable. He was younger than Thorne, maybe a century, at best, judging by the quiet throb of power that rolled off of him.
“So, where do you fit into all of this?” I asked, dropping my hands down to my lap.
“I don’t,” he replied with a faint shrug of his shoulder.
“Why are you here?”
“I came for the entertainment. Thorne said it would be interesting.”
Danaus snorted and looked back out at the crowd. Interesting. That was an understatement. The screaming crowd wasn’t so much dancing as it was writhing in a giant mass. The array of clothes and colors bore no resemblance to anything I had ever seen in nature.
“Why does Sadira want me to take you to her?” I asked.
Tristan flinched at the mention of the Ancient and lines of tension tightened around his eyes and mouth. “You’ve spoken with her?”
“I saw her less than an hour ago. I came here for Thorne, but I will be taking both you and Thorne back with me to where she is hiding.”
“No,” he whispered. Some of the light that seemed to burn in his eyes when he discovered who I was had died, and a knot twisted itself around my soul. When he spoke again, his voice had hardened with a mix of anger and fear. “No! You can’t! I won’t go back. Mira, please.” He leaned forward and held my gaze when I would have looked away from him. “You know what it’s like. You remember. I can’t go back.”