Blood Courtesan Hooked, page 18
“He did it on purpose.” Ulrich had to practically yell for me to hear him. “He needs all these people as cover.”
Cover? For what? I wondered. But if Ulrich was right—he suspected that his brother’s plan was to kidnap me right out from under him—Alaric would spirit me away onto a train, where he’d change stations too often for Ulrich to keep up. Either that—and I suspected this to be more likely—or Alaric planned to take me up the escalators and out into the sunshine, where he believed Ulrich couldn’t follow.
And there was the Axe of Freyr to consider. Ulrich couldn’t exactly pull it out in the middle of a crowded train station without causing a huge uproar. Not that I believed that would stop him, if he got a chance to wield it against his brother. In fact, I thought he was looking forward to it, however it went down. The air was charged around us with excitement and anticipation.
I had to admit—I was kind of looking forward to seeing Alaric’s final end, too.
So, when Lily stepped off the train, followed by Nadia, both of them running over to meet us, it was a little anticlimactic to find Alaric wasn’t with them. If I was disappointed, Ulrich was absolutely furious.
“What is this?” Ulrich demanded, pulling his mother aside, out of the way of the people crowding forward to get on the train. “Where is he?”
“Nadia got us both out,” Lily explained breathlessly, her face shining with hope. They’d made it this far, hadn’t they? “Alaric doesn’t know where we are or where we’re going.”
“Aren’t you bound to him?” Ulrich asked, frowning at my sister. I put my arm around her shoulder and she smiled at me. “He’ll know exactly where you are. He’ll be following you.”
Ulrich’s gaze scanned the crowd, already searching for his brother.
“I’m bound to Nadia now,” Lily told him, her green eyes blazing. “He doesn’t have any hold on me anymore.”
“Oh Lily.” I hugged her, and she hugged me back. My body flooded with relief. Then I turned to Nadia, hugging her, too. “Thank you so much for bringing my sister back to me.”
“It was the least I could do.” Nadia’s gaze settled on her son.
“How do you know he didn’t follow you?” Ulrich hadn’t given up his stance.
“No one followed us,” Nadia assured him. “No one even knows we’re gone yet. Alaric and his men are on the way to Rome, even as we speak.”
“Rome?” I blinked. “Why?”
“Because that’s where he thinks you’re going, dear.” Nadia winked, tapping her temple. “Having a little psychic ability can be useful.”
“She can influence thoughts,” Lily explained at my confused look.
“Humans, not vampires,” Nadia interjected.
“So she had some of the catophiles tell Alaric that Ulrich was taking Poppy to Rome to keep her safe.”
“I am taking her somewhere to keep her safe,” Ulrich said, looking between the two of them. “We’re going back to Alaska.”
“And you’re both going to come with us.” I gave Ulrich a sharp nudge with my elbow in the ribs when he started to protest.
“I can’t,” Lily said looking at me, so hopeful. “I need to find Aron.”
The last time I’d seen Lily, I hadn’t been in contact with Aron. He was currently flying into Paris that afternoon, but I wondered if Ulrich would be willing to wait, even knowing that Alaric had been thrown off the trail. Rome wasn’t that far from Paris, and once he found out the truth, Alaric would be back. And he’d be furious. For that reason alone, I knew we had to take Lily and Nadia back to the ice cavern, thousands of miles away. At least until we could decide what we were going to do about Alaric. And if I knew Ulrich, he would have a plan. Probably one that involved separating Alaric’s head from his shoulders.
I would tell Lily, soon—but now wasn’t the time to tell her I’d been in touch with her vampire husband.
“We shouldn’t be discussing this here.” Ulrich glanced around the train station, as if he still expected Alaric to appear at any moment. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
“Back to the hotel room?” I suggested.
“No.” Ulrich shook his head. “The plane.”
“Now?” I gaped at him. “Right now?”
“The faster we get to the plane, the faster we get you to safety,” he said, guiding me toward the escalators, with Nadia and Lily following close behind.
It was still morning-dark when we got into the car that would take us to the airport.
Lily couldn’t stop looking out the windows, afraid we were being following, which I think was making the chauffeur nervous. He kept glancing in the rearview. But there was no one behind us that I could see, and both vampires in the car didn’t seem alarmed. They would know, long before we humans, if anything was amiss.
But Ulrich was so quiet, staring out the window, that I slipped my hand into his.
“Everything all right?” I asked, leaning my cheek against his shoulder.
“We need to get to the plane before sunrise.” His gaze moved to the horizon, where just a touch of lavender was showing.
I smiled. “Ulrich… you don’t need to worry about that anymore.”
His arm went around me, pulling me close so he could plant a kiss on my forehead. Then he lowered his mouth to whisper in my ear, “I don’t, thanks to you. But she does.”
I looked up to see Nadia watching us, and understood.
I opened my mouth to tell him that I would be happy to offer myself to her, so she wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore, either, and I saw a sweet look of comprehension on his face. He’d read my thoughts already. And that prompted a soft, gentle kiss from him on my lips. I saw Lily watching us, bemused, when we parted, and I flushed. I’d once judged my sister for marrying a vampire, and here I was, with one myself.
Thankfully, we did make it just before the sun began to rise. While the plane was being refueled, Ulrich had the crew drew all the shades, so his mother would be safe. She and Lily sat together, while I went with Ulrich to the front of the plane. He knocked on the cockpit door and when the pilot opened it, an orange light flooding the entryway, Ulrich took a reflexive step back.
The look of wonder on his face when the rosy light of the sun touched it reminded me of a child coming down the stairs. seeing the gifts that had magically appeared under the tree on Christmas morning. The pilot asked what Ulrich had knocked about, but whatever it was seemed to have gone out of his head altogether. He looked down at his hands, pink in the light, and then at me, incredulous.
I don’t know if he read my mind, but I was thinking it, and somehow the action followed—both of us headed to the airplane’s door. He was careful to make sure the curtain was pulled, so his mother wouldn’t be exposed, before opening the door and stepping out onto the rolling stairs. I followed him, breathing in the cool morning air as he put an arm around my shoulder and we watched the sky go from pink and purple to a soft, glowing orange.
“It’s the first sunrise I’ve seen in a thousand years,” he said, his mouth against my ear. “You are a precious gift. Thank you…”
I turned my face up and kissed him.
Inside, we made our way to seats in the “first-class” section—which we had all to ourselves again, and I quietly reminded Ulrich about Aron.
“Can we wait for his flight to arrive?” I asked softly, afraid Lily might overhear. I didn’t want her to know—not quite yet. “Then we can all go home.”
Ulrich checked the time, considering, then shaking his head. “We’d have to wait for sunset for him to be able to transfer to this plane without harm… I don’t think so, Poppy.”
I chewed my lower lip, looking at Lily, who was sitting near a window, nervously buckling and unbuckling her seatbelt. I knew, if I told Lily right now that Aron was flying to Paris, she’d jump off straight away to go meet his plane.
“There has to be a way…” I shifted my gaze back to Ulrich, putting my hand on his arm. “I don’t know, can’t the plane taxi in next to us or something? What about those gateway tube things? The ones that look like Habitrails? Can’t he go through one of those, from one plane to another?”
“Poppy…” Ulrich shook his head, looking doubtful. “I know you want them to be reunited… and they will be, I promise. We’ll call and tell him where we’re going. I’ll even meet his plane in Barrow and bring him down into the caverns.”
“Look at her.” I sniffed, nudging him. “She’s so sad, so worried. We’ve come this far. It’s just another few hours. We can figure out a way to get him on the plane. Please?”
He lowered his head for a moment, grimacing, looking thoughtful. Then he raised it again, meeting my eyes, and giving me a curt nod.
“All right. I’ll make it happen.”
Delighted, I squealed and hugged him, laughing when he admonished me not to get Lily all worked up, but it was too late, because she was watching us anxiously. I had to rush over to tell her, while Ulrich went to the front of the plane to make the arrangements.
“I can’t believe it,” Lily gasped, grasping my hands in hers. “I was so worried about him. I thought for sure Alaric had done something to him.”
“He’s been looking for you,” I told her. “This whole time. He jumped on a plane the moment he heard you might be in Paris."
“You’re going to love Aron.” My sister sat back with a little smile on her face. She lit up when she talked about him. Before I’d met Ulrich, I would have balked at the thought of being introduced to my sister’s vampire husband, but things had changed.
“How did you meet?” I asked, looking over at Nadia, who was leaning in across the aisle to catch our conversation. She hadn’t fallen asleep when the sun came up, so I knew she’d fed from Lily at some point. I remembered Ulrich saying what a gift it was and smiled. It wasn’t something I’d ever considered before, the affect my blood had on vampires. I’d always thought of it as a curse, but if it was freely given, maybe that was different.
Lily started telling me all about Aron, which led into sharing more about her life before she met him, and I soaked it all, like Ulrich watching a sunrise again for the first time in a thousand years. This was my sister, my twin, someone I thought was out of my life forever, but here we were, together again. I could have listened to her talk forever, telling me she had escaped Alaric, too—three years after me—but had returned to the world of the blood courtesans. If I hadn’t heard from Cora about her experience, hadn’t known that she, too, had returned to that life, I might not have understood, but now I did.
Besides, Lily hadn’t returned as a courtesan herself—she’d become a Madame in her own right, down in New Orleans, something our mother had always talked about doing but never got the chance. We both cried a little when we talked about our mother—and our Aunt Mari, the gentle woman who had mostly raised us.
“It was Alaric.” Lily’s words come out like bullets, tearing me apart.
I knew they were dead—I’d gone to see them once I’d reached adulthood, and the woman living in my childhood home told me they’d been murdered, a fate I couldn’t even imagine. And yes, I’d suspected Alaric, but couldn’t prove anything.
“He told me he killed them both,” Lily went on. “He was looking for us. For me and for you. Mostly you, Poppy. I’m glad I didn’t know where you were, so I couldn’t tell him anything.”
“He managed to find me anyway.”
I felt Nadia’s hand on my arm and looked over at her.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she told me softly, looking up as her son appeared from the front of the plane.
“I know. It’s okay.” I smiled at her. “You saved my sister. That’s more than made up for it. Besides, I got to see Paris.”
Lily laughed at that, and she was beaming when Ulrich told her that he’d been in touch with Aron. His plane would land in a few hours, and Ulrich had made arrangements to get him onto our plane.
“Thank you so much,” she said, getting up to hug Ulrich. He was surprised by that and stood, blinking over Lily’s red head at me, but then he patted her hair and told her it was going to be all right.
“You actually live in Alaska?” Lily wrinkled her nose. “Why?”
“No sun six months out of the year,” Nadia said. “It’s kind of perfect for vampires.”
“Except there’s very little vampire food,” I said with a snort. “Not too many people live in Barrow.”
“Well who could blame them?” Lily rolled her eyes. “No sun and sub-zero temperatures? No thanks. Can’t we go somewhere tropical?”
“The ice caverns are protected,” Ulrich said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Alaric can’t get in, even if he can find them.”
“Well, we can’t stay there forever.” Lily pouted. “What’s the long-term plan?”
“It’s actually quite nice,” I said, defending the place.
Ulrich’s face darkened at Lily’s words. “The short-term plan involves killing my brother. After that, you can go wherever you like.”
I saw Nadia wince at that. Ulrich noticed, too.
“I know he’s your son.” He went down to one knee, so he was face to face with his mother. “But he killed my father. He turned you into… this. And if he hadn’t…”
“You don’t have to say any more.” Nadia swallowed, reaching out to touch his cheek. “Alaric was dead to me as a son a long time ago. I won’t shed any tears when he’s gone, and the world will be better for it.”
“I will kill him.” Ulrich rose to his feet, looking down at his mother. “If it’s the last thing I do.”
The determination in his voice made me shiver. I think we all believed him. I saw a sadness in Nadia’s eyes, despite her words. It was hard to imagine, being the mother of both Alaric and Ulrich. They were as opposite as I could imagine two men being.
“I know you’ve been waiting a long time for your revenge,” Nadia said softly.
I looked between the two of them, mother and son. We hadn’t had a chance to talk about it yet, but I wondered how Ulrich could forgive his mother for turning him in the first place. Perhaps he considered her actions blameless, considering Alaric was the one who had turned her. Nadia had simply done what vampires do. She had fed on the first human she found—and made another vampire out of him. He just happened to be her other son.
“Speaking of waiting…” Lily looked anxiously toward the drawn curtain. “How much longer before Aron gets here?”
It turned out we didn’t have to wait too long at all. Aron arrived, a little disheveled from a ride in a covered baggage handler cart. Lily ran up the aisle the minute he appeared, throwing herself at him with a force that would have knocked a normal man to the ground. He just laughed and kissed her, long and hard. There were more tears and laughter and quick introductions. Aron had been a very handsome man in life, with deep, chocolate eyes and long dark hair that brushed his shoulders. He had a disarming smile and a charming way about him that instantly put us all at ease.
Ulrich shook Aron’s hand, sizing him up from the minute he came on the plane, but I saw Ulrich slowly, visibly begin to relax as Aron and Lily reunited, talking about their life in New Orleans, how Lily had been kidnapped by Alaric and his men—mid-day, of course, when Aron couldn’t immediately follow—and how he’d been looking high and low for her ever since.
When the flight attendant came back and told us we needed to take our seats, I sat next to Ulrich, taking his hand in mine. Things had come full circle. We had started on this plane together, searching for my sister, and we had found her. Now, we were taking her—and her husband—home with us. Ulrich’s mother, too, had joined our little family. Somehow, out of all of this, something good had happened.
And the best thing was Ulrich.
I couldn’t open my window shade because of the vampires on board, but when the plane slowly began to move, I knew we where heading toward the runway. Toward home. I squeezed Ulrich’s hand, excited to finally be on our way, leaning my cheek against his arm. His bicep was as hard as a rock and the hand in mine squeezed, tightening to the point that the bones in my hand starting to grind together and I yelped.
“Ulrich!”
He looked at me, but he wasn’t seeing me—he looked right through me.
“Where are you going?” I wrinkled my brow at him as he unbuckled his seat belt, practically bolting over me into the aisle. “We’re supposed to stay buckled. Ulrich!”
I unbuckled, too, following him up the aisle, my heart thudding hard in my chest.
Something was wrong.
Ulrich pounded on the cockpit door, calling out for the pilot. When the co-pilot cracked the door, a puzzled look on his face, Ulrich practically pulled it off its hinges yanking it open. The afternoon sun was blazing, a fact that would have previously reduced a vampire to dust, but Ulrich stood there, unharmed.
I wasn’t sure which surprised the men in the cockpit more, the fact that their vampire client was standing in full sunlight, or the fact that he had burst into the cockpit making demands.
“We need to get off the ground.” Ulrich looked directly at the pilot, who wasn’t a vampire. “Now Right fucking now.”
“I… I’m waiting for a lane.” The pilot nodded out the plane’s front window, where other planes were taxiing into position. “We’re fifth in line. Only another ten minutes, tops.”
“We don’t have ten minutes.” Ulrich lurched forward, between the pilot and co-pilot, leaning his hands on the instrument panel to stare out the windshield, craning his head to see below.
“Wh… what are you doing?” The co-pilot half stood out of his chair, but Ulrich pushed him back into his seat with one heavy hand on his shoulder.
“There are men trying to access this plane. Vampires. At least half a dozen. Maybe more”
“What?” The pilot was an older man, in his sixties probably, with a Dr. Phil half-moon haircut that was almost completely grey. He looked at Ulrich like he’d gone insane. “Vampires? I’m sorry, but that’s impossible—”
“Do you see me standing here?” Ulrich barked, throwing his hands wide. “Trust me—these vampires are impervious to sunlight. And they are, right now, somewhere underneath this plane, trying to gain access.”
