I shook my head. I wasn’t going to let him play mind games with me. “Just stop. You weren’t there,” I replied.
“I was there,” he murmured. My gaze jerked over to him at the sound of movement. He crawled a couple feet closer but remained out of arm’s reach. “Every day and every night of your captivity, I was there. You just don’t remember because I looked a little different back then.”
“Years not been kind?” I mocked.
His face twisted into a look of anger and hatred for a split second before he could wipe it away. “I’m sure the years have scarred us both in interesting ways.”
“Why bring me here? I could still stop your sacrifice, destroy all your plans.” I smiled at him as I sat up. I rubbed my hands together, knocking off the dirt.
Rowe sat up as well, seeming to move with a little more ease and less obvious pain. We were both slowly regaining our strength. “Because the reward is worth the risk.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “Killing me is worth that much to you?”
Rowe shoved his left hand through his hair, threading some of it behind his left ear so it no longer fell in front of his one eye. A white scar ran along his jaw and seemed to glow against his tanned skin in the moonlight. “My goal is not to kill you.”
I snorted in response, and Rowe said something under his breath in his own language, frustration filling his voice. He looked over at the arrangement of stones for a moment before turning back to me again.
“It doesn’t have to be like this between us.”
“What? The naturi have graciously decided to stop killing nightwalkers?”
This time he was the one to snort. “No, nightwalkers are vermin. They need to be exterminated. I meant between you and the naturi.”
“I am a nightwalker, asshole.”
“But you were never meant to be,” he said, leaning toward me as his voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “You never should have been made into one of their kind. Your powers reach beyond their limitations. You could have been more. You still could be.”
I leaned back, trying to keep some distance between us. With him sitting this close, it was hard to resist the urge to take a swipe at him, but I didn’t stand a chance with his compatriots just a few yards away. “Let me guess, you can help me become more,” I sneered.
“You can feel the power here, and no other vampire can. When they swarmed Machu Picchu centuries ago, not one of them reacted the way you do. You can still feel the earth despite being a nightwalker,” he explained. “It’s still a part of you because it’s more powerful than anything you’ve gained through becoming a nightwalker. You belong with us, not them.”
A slow chuckle built until my head finally fell backward, my laughter filling the plain, silencing the soft plaintive cries from the woman doomed to die tonight. “Save your breath. I’ve heard this speech before, though it was more interesting the first time. At Machu Picchu, you guys were just trying to convince me to kill my own kind. Now you want me to believe that I belong among you.”
“Can you honestly tell me you feel you belong among your own kind? Hmmm, Fire Starter?”
The laugh died inside of me. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You can end the war tonight,” Rowe softly said.
“By killing you?”
“By completing the sacrifice.”
My brow furrowed as I stared at him for a long time, letting the silence grow between us. “What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice dropping to match his softness.
“If you complete the sacrifice, the seal will be broken permanently. You made it. If you break it, the nightwalkers will never be able to recreate it again. We end this battle forever.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I kill you now.”
“And if I do?”
“You walk away. The naturi shall never bother you again.”
“But I will be branded a traitor and will be hunted by my own kind until the end of my nights,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Then break the seal and remain with us,” he offered, stunning me. “I am consort to the queen, and you will be under my protection. The naturi will never harass you and the nightwalkers will never touch you.”
I turned my head to look back at Stonehenge for a second before letting my eyes fall shut. In the hands of the naturi, I was a weapon against the nightwalkers. And while among the nightwalkers, I was a weapon against the naturi. Without ever knowing it, I had managed to dig a heel into both worlds.
Planting both of my hands into the dirt, I pushed off and rose to my feet. Beside me there was a soft rustle of clothing as Rowe stood. He stuck close to me as I slowly walked past the first circle of stones and into the inner circle. The other six naturi circled the woman lying on the ground. Her wrists had been bound together and then tied to a stake in the ground above her head. Her ankles were also bound together and staked so that she was stretched out, her body running east to west. She had short, dark brown hair and her round face was streaked with tears. The smell of her blood filled the air, as her wrists were rubbed raw from her struggles.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked, staring down at her.
Rowe stepped in front of me and gently grabbed my chin, tilting my head up so I was forced to look him in the eye. “You will do this?”
“It’s time to end this war.”
A half smile lifted one corner of his mouth briefly and he nodded. “You must cut out her heart and place it on the ground. Her blood must saturate the earth before we burn her heart.”
I had to be sure. I couldn’t make any mistakes now. As Rowe stepped back to my side, I took a step closer to the woman. She stared up with wide eyes, pleading silently with me to free her. But I couldn’t. She was the only human in the area. As long as she lived, she could serve as a sacrifice for the naturi whatever I did. The best I could do for her was make it quick.
Staring down at her, I focused on her heart. The slender woman gasped suddenly, shattering the silence in the night air. Her body arched off the ground and all the naturi took a step backward. The woman jerked again, this time screaming.
“What’s happening?” someone demanded.
“It’s the nightwalker! She’s killing the woman,” another voice snarled, but I didn’t look up. I remained focused on the woman’s chest until her pale blue shirt with pearl buttons finally started to blacken and catch on fire.
“Stop her!”
Rowe grabbed me and threw me backward into one of the enormous stones, breaking my concentration. I fell back to the ground, my eyes clenched shut as I waited to see if I’d hit the stone with enough force to knock loose the other stone balanced on top of it. When I wasn’t immediately crushed, I opened my eyes, trying to ignore the pain throbbing to life along my spine and in the back of my skull.
“Can we still use the woman?” Rowe demanded, looking briefly over his shoulder at the woman, who was no longer moving.
“The heart has been destroyed,” someone else confirmed.
The naturi with the eye patch turned back to me, a knife clutched in his right hand. “Then we will try it with her heart,” Rowe proclaimed.
I dug my heels into the earth and tried to scoot backward, but I was halted by giant stone sticking up from the earth. I had used the last of my powers to kill that poor woman, and now I had nothing left to save myself.
My only warning was a slight building of pressure, a shift in the powers that filled the circle, and then Jabari was standing beside me.
Rowe and the other naturi jumped back, gathering on the other side of the circle, the woman’s corpse between us. The knife in his hand trembled as he stared at the Ancient, his breath hissing between clenched teeth.
“You cannot have her,” Jabari proclaimed.
Rowe hunched forward, then a low growl escaped him as giant wings exploded from his back. As black as a moonless night, the fully extended wings were more than nine feet long from tip to tip and resembled those of a bat. “You cannot keep her forever,” he snarled, pointing his knife at Jabari.