my ability to find Ella.
My head felt as if it had expanded and my sight sharpened, while each sound echoed
throughout my brain. The last ten hours had gone by so painfully slowly that I thought
I would explode into a million pieces.
I needed to feed, and the longer I waited, the worse la Luxure became. The problem
was that human blood was the only blood that would help my hunger, and I feared losing
control if I took from a vein.
My only option was to head to the nearest hospital. It would be easy to finesse a
nurse into taking me to the blood bank there. Bagged human blood would cause the thirst
to ebb, but only temporarily; soon I would be forced to find my master or take from
a willing or unwilling human, but by that time, I was afraid that la Luxure would
have robbed me of my regard of human life.
I needed to find Ella, get her to safety, and then exit her life. She would have Alex
and the Council to care for her while I handled Laurent.
First, I had to make another phone call, one I had thought I’d never have to make
again, to ask for help. I needed to see Ella safe before I left Cedar for good.
Chapter 5
Jace
I pushed the double doors to Aleixandre’s office open and waltzed in. He sat at this
desk with his head in a mass of papers. He spent most of his time there, now. Researching
and debating with himself.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Did someone in this Council ruin my retrieval?
Only one other person knew of the pickup site and drop site and now I’m hearing that
he’s MIA.”
Maybe it wasn’t my fault that Ella was gone. I had assumed that Laurent found Ella
through the weird connection he had with her and Agnes, but maybe I was wrong. I’d
told Aleixandre that I worried about Santiago’s allegiance, but he gave the man more
responsibilities, ones he’d thought would replace Santiago’s need to live forever.
Santiago had threatened to leave before, saying that Laurent created immortals daily,
though Laurent created his immortals with tainted blood and kept them as slaves.
In the end, Santiago had gone to Laurent as he’d threatened. Maybe he had known the
pickup site.
“It’s good to see you too, son ,” Aleixandre said, tone quiet but threatening. He didn’t even look up from his paper.
I took a deep, calming breath. He was angry, but did I actually deserve his anger?
I handled the situation as best as I could. It wasn’t the eighteenth century anymore;
taking a teenage girl by the authority of the Council was harder than Aleixandre would
ever know; he’d never been sent to retrieve an Arc.
“You have about forty-five minutes before the jet leaves for Rome. Shouldn’t you be
suiting up and hitting the weapons room?” His terse tone left no room for compromise.
“Why?”
There was a long pause. “Because.” Aleixandre looked at me with hard eyes. “I think
that I have been too lenient with you, Jace. Though we had a mole in the Council,
you were still responsible for getting the Arc back to us. You waited too long, and
because of that, she is in his hands. The odds are stacked even higher against us
now.”
I scoffed and ran my hands through my hair. “Do you think it easy? Do you think it
is easy to get a teenage girl to leave everyone she loves behind and follow a complete
stranger?” I knew that Aleixandre was from a different time, but he couldn’t have
been that clueless.
“Who did she have left?” he asked pointedly. “After a nervous breakdown, she was released
from the state hospital, to a family that couldn’t relate to her. You were supposed
to be able to relate to her. You were supposed to bring her here!”
I looked at him in the eyes. Ella had moved from Cedar and left all she knew of Virginia
Beach behind, after the death of her parents. She’d told both me and Kale that she
wanted to leave and live on her own, and I had hoped to use that to get her to come
My head felt as if it had expanded and my sight sharpened, while each sound echoed
throughout my brain. The last ten hours had gone by so painfully slowly that I thought
I would explode into a million pieces.
I needed to feed, and the longer I waited, the worse la Luxure became. The problem
was that human blood was the only blood that would help my hunger, and I feared losing
control if I took from a vein.
My only option was to head to the nearest hospital. It would be easy to finesse a
nurse into taking me to the blood bank there. Bagged human blood would cause the thirst
to ebb, but only temporarily; soon I would be forced to find my master or take from
a willing or unwilling human, but by that time, I was afraid that la Luxure would
have robbed me of my regard of human life.
I needed to find Ella, get her to safety, and then exit her life. She would have Alex
and the Council to care for her while I handled Laurent.
First, I had to make another phone call, one I had thought I’d never have to make
again, to ask for help. I needed to see Ella safe before I left Cedar for good.
Chapter 5
Jace
I pushed the double doors to Aleixandre’s office open and waltzed in. He sat at this
desk with his head in a mass of papers. He spent most of his time there, now. Researching
and debating with himself.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Did someone in this Council ruin my retrieval?
Only one other person knew of the pickup site and drop site and now I’m hearing that
he’s MIA.”
Maybe it wasn’t my fault that Ella was gone. I had assumed that Laurent found Ella
through the weird connection he had with her and Agnes, but maybe I was wrong. I’d
told Aleixandre that I worried about Santiago’s allegiance, but he gave the man more
responsibilities, ones he’d thought would replace Santiago’s need to live forever.
Santiago had threatened to leave before, saying that Laurent created immortals daily,
though Laurent created his immortals with tainted blood and kept them as slaves.
In the end, Santiago had gone to Laurent as he’d threatened. Maybe he had known the
pickup site.
“It’s good to see you too, son ,” Aleixandre said, tone quiet but threatening. He didn’t even look up from his paper.
I took a deep, calming breath. He was angry, but did I actually deserve his anger?
I handled the situation as best as I could. It wasn’t the eighteenth century anymore;
taking a teenage girl by the authority of the Council was harder than Aleixandre would
ever know; he’d never been sent to retrieve an Arc.
“You have about forty-five minutes before the jet leaves for Rome. Shouldn’t you be
suiting up and hitting the weapons room?” His terse tone left no room for compromise.
“Why?”
There was a long pause. “Because.” Aleixandre looked at me with hard eyes. “I think
that I have been too lenient with you, Jace. Though we had a mole in the Council,
you were still responsible for getting the Arc back to us. You waited too long, and
because of that, she is in his hands. The odds are stacked even higher against us
now.”
I scoffed and ran my hands through my hair. “Do you think it easy? Do you think it
is easy to get a teenage girl to leave everyone she loves behind and follow a complete
stranger?” I knew that Aleixandre was from a different time, but he couldn’t have
been that clueless.
“Who did she have left?” he asked pointedly. “After a nervous breakdown, she was released
from the state hospital, to a family that couldn’t relate to her. You were supposed
to be able to relate to her. You were supposed to bring her here!”
I looked at him in the eyes. Ella had moved from Cedar and left all she knew of Virginia
Beach behind, after the death of her parents. She’d told both me and Kale that she
wanted to leave and live on her own, and I had hoped to use that to get her to come
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