Seize the Night (Dark-Hunter #7)(36)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

"We don’t know where Nick is," Otto said quietly. "I found his mother dead."

Ash vanished immediately.

"I really hate it when he does that," Kyrian said as he shifted a now-sleeping Marissa in his arms.

Tabitha didn’t move while her sister sat down on the floor and started crying.

Tabitha sat beside her and pulled her close.

"What a day," Amanda sobbed. "I saw my husband killed. Kassim… Tia and now Cherise."

"I know," Tabitha said. "I’m not so sure we’re the ones who won this time around."

"No," Kyrian said as he joined them on the floor. "We’re still here and they’re not. To me, that’s winning." He pulled his wife against his chest and kissed her on the head.

Tabitha turned to see Valerius heading for the door with Otto.

By the time she caught up, he and Otto were outside the house.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"We didn’t want to intrude on a family moment," he said quietly. "Your sister needs you."

"And I need you."

Valerius was stunned as she walked into his arms.

She wrapped her arms around him and held him close while Otto turned off her car.

"I’ll leave the keys in it and see you guys later." He got into his Jag and drove off.

"Thank you," Tabitha whispered as she tucked her head in below his chin. "I wouldn’t have made it through tonight without you."

"I’m sorry I wasn’t of more help and I’m so sorry about Tia."

He felt her tears scalding his chest through his shirt.

"Your mother said she wanted you home."

Tabitha nodded. "Yeah, I need to go see her. She draws her strength from us." She pulled away as Amanda came out onto the front porch. "I’m going to see Mom."

Amanda nodded. "Tell her I’ll be there tomorrow morning. I don’t want her to see me like this."

Tabitha looked at Amanda’s bloodied gown.

"Yeah, that’s the last thing she needs."

Then Amanda did the most amazing thing of all: She reached out and pulled Valerius close for a hug. "Thank you for coming, Valerius, and for keeping Tabitha safe. I really appreciate it." She kissed his cheek before she pulled away.

Valerius had never been more stunned in his life. In that moment, he felt a strange sense of almost belonging somewhere. It was such a foreign, odd sensation that he wasn’t sure how to cope with it.

"My pleasure, Amanda."

She patted his arm, then went back into her house.

Valerius helped Tabitha into her battered car and for once he took the driver’s seat. He didn’t say a word as she gave him directions to her mother’s house in Metairie.

Neither of them spoke the entire way. His heart ached for her. Taking her hand, he held it quietly in the darkness while she stared out the passenger side window.

When they reached her mother’s house, he got out and opened the door for her.

Tabitha drew a ragged breath as she contemplated facing her mother. For once her courage was gone.

Valerius handed her the keys.

She frowned at him as he stepped away from her. "What are you doing?"

"I was going to head back."

"Don’t leave me, Val. Please."

He brushed a tender hand down her cold cheek and nodded. He kept his hands on her shoulders and in truth she needed to feel his touch as she knocked on the door.

Her father answered it, his face grim. His dour look lightened and tears filled his eyes as he saw her and pulled her up into a rib-crushing embrace. "Thank God at least you’re all right. Your mother has been out of her mind with fear for you."

She hugged him back. "I’m okay, Daddy, so’s Amanda and Kyrian."

Her father released her, then narrowed his eyes on Valerius. "Who are you?"

"He’s my boyfriend, Daddy, please be nice to him."

Kindness was the last thing Valerius expected, so when her father held a hand out to him, he was stunned.

Valerius shook it and then was led into a house that was packed full of the Devereaux clan.

And as he stepped into the living room, Valerius felt something he’d never felt in all his life.

He felt like he’d come home.

Chapter 16

Ash entered Artemis’s temple on Olympus without any preamble. In the middle of the large main room, which was surrounded by columns, she reclined on a white throne that looked more like a chaise longue.

Her koris, who had been singing and playing lutes, immediately rushed from the room and as one rather tall blond kori ran past him, he paused and turned to look after her.

"What are you doing here?" Artemis asked, and for once her tone was hesitant.

He turned back toward her and shifted the backpack on his shoulder. "I wanted to thank you for what you did tonight, but as I considered that, it dawned on me that you have never once in eleven thousand years done anything for me for free. The sheer fear factor of that realization alone has made me come seeking you. So what gives?"

Artemis wrapped her arms around herself as she sat on her white throne. "I was worried about you."

He laughed bitterly at that. "You never worry about me."

"I do, too. I called and you didn’t answer me."

"I almost never answer you."

She looked away, reminding him of a cringing child who had been caught doing something wrong.

"Spill it, Artemis. I have a lot of crap to clean up tonight and don’t want you on top of it."

She took a deep breath. "Very well, it’s not like I can keep it from you."

"Keep what from me?"

"A new Dark-Hunter was born tonight."

His blood ran cold at that. Literally. "Damn you, Artemis! How could you do this?"

She came off her throne ready to battle. "I had no choice."

"Yeah, right."

"No, Acheron. I had no choice."

As she spoke, his mind connected with hers and the images of her and Nick went through him.

"Nick?" he breathed, his heart shattering.

What had he done?

"You cursed him," Artemis said quietly. "I’m so sorry."

Ash ground his teeth as guilt consumed him. He knew better than to speak in anger.

His will, even when not thought out, made reality. One wrong word…

He had damned his best friend.

"Where is he?"

"The bower room."

Ash started to leave, but Artemis stopped him. "I didn’t know what else to do, Acheron. I didn’t."

She held her hand out and a dark green amulet appeared. She handed it to him.

"How many lashes?" he asked bitterly, thinking it was Valerius’s soul she offered him.

A single tear fled down her cheek. "None. It’s Nick’s soul, and I have no right to it." She pressed it into his hand.

Ash was so stunned he didn’t know what to say.

He placed it into his backpack.

Artemis swallowed as she watched him tuck it carefully away. "Now you’re going to learn."

"Learn what?"

"Just how heavy a burden a soul is."

He gave her a dry stare. "That I learned a long time ago, Artie."

And with that, he stepped back and willed himself to Nick’s prison. He opened the door slowly to find his friend in a fetal position on the floor.

"Nick?"

Nick looked up, his black eyes rimmed in red. The anger and pain Ash saw and felt from Nick tore through him. "They killed my mother, Ash."

A new wave of guilt slammed through him. In one fit of anger and with nothing more than a single sentence, he had altered their fates and had stolen from Nick and Tabitha the two people that neither of them should have lost.

It was all his fault.

"I know, Nick, and I’m sorry." He was sorrier than Nick would ever know. "Cherise was one of the few decent people in this world. I loved her, too."

He loved the New Orleans crew a lot more than he should. Love was a worthless emotion that had never served him anything but misery.

Even Simi…

Ash ran his hand over her tattoo as he fought back his emotions.

He made himself numb, then reached out to Nick. "C’mon."

"Where are we going?"

"I’m taking you home. You have a lot to learn."

"About what?"

"How to be a Dark-Hunter. Everything you think you know about fighting, surviving, it’s nothing. I have to show you how to use your new powers and to see correctly with those eyes."

"And if I don’t want to learn?"

"Then you’ll die and there won’t be any coming back from it this time."

Nick took his hand and allowed him to pull him to his feet.

Ash closed his eyes and took Nick home.

He’d never looked forward to training a new Dark-Hunter, but this one…

This one hurt most of all.

Valerius slipped out of the Devereaux house an hour before dawn. Tabitha had finally fallen asleep, and he had carried her upstairs to the room that she had shared with Amanda when they were children.

After placing her on the bed, he’d spent longer than he should have looking over the old photos on the wall of the two of them together.

Of them with their sisters.

His poor Tabitha. He didn’t know if she’d ever heal.

He called a taxi and had it drop him at his house. The place was completely dark. There was no one there now, and he realized just how reliant he’d become on Tabitha.

These last couple of weeks…

They had been miraculous.

She was miraculous.

Now their time together was over.

Valerius opened the door to his house and listened to the silence. He shut and locked the door, then walked up the stairs to the solarium where Agrippina’s statue waited.

He refilled the oil in her lamp before he realized just how stupid he’d been, both as a man and as a Dark-Hunter.

He hadn’t been able to protect Agrippina or Tabitha from the pain that was life.

Just as he couldn’t protect himself.

But then, maybe life wasn’t about protecting. Maybe it was about something else.

Something even more valuable.

It was about sharing.

He didn’t need someone to protect him from the past. He needed the touch of a woman whose warmth chased away those demons. A woman whose very presence had made the unbearable bearable.

And in all these centuries he still hadn’t learned the most valuable thing of all.

How to say "I love you" to someone.

But at least now he understood what feeling it meant.

His heart shattering, he touched Agrippina’s cold cheek. It was time to let go of the past.

"Good night, Agrippina," he whispered.

Stepping down, he blew out her flame and walked out of the room that had been hers alone and into the one he had learned to share with Tabitha.

Tabitha came awake to find herself alone in her old bed. She closed her eyes and wished herself back to childhood. Back to the days when all of her sisters had shared this house with her. Back to the time when their worst fear was not having a date for the prom.

But time was ever fleeting.

And there was no way back.

Sighing, she rolled over and realized that Valerius wasn’t with her. She felt the absence of him immediately.

She got up and pulled on a bathrobe her mother must have left in the room for her. As she walked past the dresser, she paused, then stepped back to see a ring on top of it.

Her heart pounded as she recognized Valerius’s signet ring on top of a folded-up note.

Picking it up, she read the handful of words.

Thank you, my lady Tabitha. For everything.

Val

Tabitha frowned. Was it a kiss-off? Oh, yeah, that was just what she needed right now.

Why not?

She was almost angry until she read it again and realized that he hadn’t signed it "Valerius."

He’d used her nickname for him.

A nickname he hated.

Her throat tight, she tucked the note into her pocket and kissed the ring he’d left her. She slid it onto her thumb and went to bathe.

Valerius was dreaming of Tabitha. She was laughing in his ear as she lay beneath him.

It seemed so real, he could almost swear he felt her hand on his back…

No, now it was buried in his hair.

And then she moved it away and ran it over his hip, down his thigh until she cupped him in her palm.

Growling in pleasure, Valerius opened his eyes to realize it wasn’t a dream.

Tabitha lay on her side next to him. "Hi, baby," she whispered.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, unable to believe she was real.

She held her hand up to show him his ring. "How could I be anywhere else given the curtness of your note?"

"My note wasn’t curt."

She scoffed at him. "I almost thought you were telling me to hit the road."

"Why would you think that? I left you my ring."

"Consolation gift?"

He rolled his eyes at her misbegotten reasoning. "No, that ring means that the wearer is worth his or her weight in gold. See?" He held it up so that she could see the regal crest.

A slow smile spread across her face. "I’m worth my weight in gold?"

Valerius moved her hand to his lips so that he could kiss it. "You’re worth a lot more than that to me."

Her eyes misted as she looked up at him. "I love you, Valerius."