The Immortal Bond (The Immortal Mark Book 3) Page 14

  “Cara…” Theo says, his voice strained. “I had no idea you wanted to be immortal. I thought you loathed the very idea of it.”

  “This sounds like something you two should talk about in private,” Damien says. “It’s getting entirely too awkward up in here.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I say.

  Theo looks like he disagrees, but he just keeps driving.

  The international airport is just as busy in the middle of the night as it was in the daytime. I don’t know why I find this interesting, but I do. I guess you assume people are home with loved ones sleeping late at night, but some of them are out traveling. Maybe traveling to loved ones, or rushing to get away from them.

  As we step up to the ticket counter, Theo asks the woman about flights back to Texas.

  “No,” I say, stepping up to the desk. “California, please.”

  The woman looks old enough to be my grandmother, and the fine lines in her cheeks tell me she’s not one for putting up with nonsense. She raises a brow and looks at Theo, who looks at me.

  “Why California?” he says.

  “You know why,” I say back. “We don’t need to plan, we just need to act.”

  “Sounds alright to me,” Damien says, drumming his fingers on the edge of the counter. “I am so ready to be done with this shit and get back home away from you guys.”

  “He makes another great point,” I say, giving him an annoyed look. To the woman, I say, “California, please.”

  “There’s a flight leaving in forty five minutes, but only first class seating is available.”

  “We’ll take it.”

  She looks at Theo again, as if to get permission. It really annoys me that she assumes the woman here has no say in the matter. “Three tickets please,” I say in my rudest voice.

  Theo nods slightly, which annoys me, but apparently, the woman can’t buy a fucking plane ticket without the man’s approval.

  Everything is kind of annoying me right now. From the kids running around being too loud in the waiting area, to the Starbucks being out of coffee at two in the morning. I let the annoyance build up inside of me instead of shoving it away, all in an effort to be as pissed as possible when I come face to face with Lady Em.

  No one takes me seriously. From immortal clan members who are older than dirt, to a stupid old woman at the airport. I’m sick of being underestimated and tossed aside. I’m not some worthless loser from the ghetto who will never amount to anything.

  I am worthy. I won’t cower down and beg for anything to be given to me anymore. I will make good on the promise I made to those twelve kids waiting on me at home. I might have to die eventually, but they will live long happy lives.

  Because I have decided to stand up for myself and take what I want.

  And the only thing I want right now is to see the life leave Lady Em’s piercing blue eyes.

  Chapter 27

  When the plane lands in California, my veins start pumping with adrenaline. I am fearless, and I am ready to free those kids and put an end to Lady Em’s reign of terror. Unfortunately, all of my excitement has to wait an hour while we rent a car and drive to the castle that she calls a home. After having visited the real Dover castle, her place is nothing more than a pile of bricks and arrogance. But I can see the similarities from the way Lady Em decorates her place to the way the real castle looked. She’s still holding on to her past, dreaming of a life with a man who didn’t really love her.

  She’s so beautiful, she could have had anyone she wanted, I think as I sit in the backseat of our rented Suburban. She did have many lovers over the years, it would seem. Like the guy who built her the house in Austin, who probably loved her like crazy as evidenced by the stone mosaic in the foyer. She only used him though, just like Lord Timothy used her.

  In the car ride, Theo calls the clan back at home and tells them the good news. They’re all excited to be officially recognized as a real clan, and I’m happy for them, too. But my happiness is overshadowed by the impending doom of being tethered to my bracelet. The pain sinks into me now. The Dover clan didn’t help me. They didn’t confirm or deny that there is a way to help me, either. I can choose to spend my remaining months searching for a way or just try to live happily until I die. No matter what, one thing is certain.

  I won’t have Theo forever.

  I’ll have him until I die, so I guess I’ll have him for the rest of my life, but he will go on, choosing new lifebloods and living a long—impossibly long—life.

  When we’re a few miles away from Lady Em’s house, we pull over to get gas. Theo thinks we should have a full tank in case we have to rush out of there in a hurry.

  As Theo pulls the Suburban up to the gas tank, I lean forward. “Hey, Damien? Could you pump the gas?”

  “What am I, a bus boy?” he says.

  I give him a pleading look. “Please?”

  He glances from me to Theo and back. “Fine,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt.

  As soon as the door is closed behind him, Theo takes my hand. There are dark circles under his eyes from the lack of sleep he got on our flight home. His hair is wilder than usual. The black button up shirt he’s wearing is all wrinkled and I realize I probably look just as bad in my jeans and shirt. We haven’t showered in twenty four hours, after all.

  “Theo,” I say, looking down at our intertwined hands. “When I die—” I pause to gather my thoughts. The very idea of dying makes my heart rip to pieces, but this needs to be said and since we’re about to meet Lady Em, this might be the last time I can say it. “When I die, I’m afraid you’ll try to do something stupid like let yourself die and not get a new lifeblood right away.”

  Theo frowns, and that expression alone tells me I’m probably right in my theory. I look him in the eyes. “Don’t. I want you to live. I want you to take care of the kids until they’re grown and don’t need you anymore. And only then can you think about dying, but even then…” My chest aches with the idea of Theo living long enough to find another lover. Someone he loves more than me. “Even then… consider living.”

  Theo reaches for me, wrapping his arm around my neck and pulling me across the car’s console. I’m still sitting in the back seat, but my face is pressed against his chest. “Cara, I love you. I didn’t know love before I met you.” He squeezes me tightly, his hair smelling like the airplane’s air freshener, but I hold on tightly. “I’ll take care of the kids,” he says, pulling back to look at me. “But I’ll never give up on finding a way to save you.”

  He smiles, his thumb running across my cheek. “I already have an idea. What if we get you an immortality stone, and get you a lifeblood. You’ll still be my lifeblood, but you should be immortal, too, right?”

  I shake my head. “It says that won’t work in the book Riley translated.”

  Theo’s face falls so quickly it feels like I’ve been punched. “I’m sorry,” I say, pulling him into a hug. “If my bracelet can’t come off, then I die. And that’s going to happen. I’m accepting it more every day.”

  “Or I can die,” he says. “You deserve your life more than I deserve mine.”

  I grit my teeth. “You will not kill yourself to free me from this thing.”

  Tears spring to my eyes. I grab onto his shoulders and force him to look at me. “You can’t do that to me. You might think you’re saving me, but I can’t live without you, Theo. Promise me you won’t do it.”

  Tears fill his amber eyes. His hands are warm on my cheeks as he brings me in for a kiss. “I promise,” he whispers against my lips.

  His words fill me with relief.

  Outside, the gas pump makes a thump sound when the tank is full. Damien hooks the handle back on the pump and then walks over to the passenger side of the car. If he was watching our exchange in the car just now, he doesn’t say anything. He takes out his phone and calls someone.

  “We’re almost there,” he says. “Okay. Thanks.”

  He hangs up the phone. “
The guys say she hasn’t left her room in an hour. She’s sitting at her desk, reviewing something. She’s literally a sitting duck right now. They’re going to call me if she moves.”

  “We need to drive fast,” I say, tapping the center console with my palm. “Let’s go.”

  We park on the side of the road at the end of the long winding driveway that goes to Lady Em’s fake castle. There’s a calm over my body, despite my every nerve ready to spring into action. I am ready for this. In a few minutes, it’ll all be over.

  We make our way down the driveway, knowing that Theo and Damien’s friends from the Embrook clan are hidden outside of the house, watching Lady Em as we approach. So far, so good. She’s still at her desk.

  When we get to the front door, Damien reaches into the waistband of his bands, pulling out a small pistol.

  “Dude!” I hiss. “Put that away.”

  He gives me this condescending look. “Guns kill people faster than anything,” he says. “I’m doing this,” I snap. “Put it away.”

  “You can take the lead, but it’s a good idea,” Theo says, his hand gentle on my back. “If it comes down to a you or her thing, we’re going to pick you.”

  I grit my teeth, knowing he’s right. I just really want to do this for myself. I nod and let out a breath. “Okay, but stay back. I want a chance to do this my way.”

  “Deal,” Damien says. He doesn’t put the gun away, but he does lower it. He curls his hand toward the door in a gentlemanly fashion. “Ladies first.”

  I enter her home for the second time. The front door is unlocked, showing Lady Em’s profound arrogance. The Embrook guys said she never even bothered to check on her guard, so she probably assumes he’s still here, still watching over her house from the attic.

  Stupid.

  I make my way through the oddly-decorated house, to the long hallway that leads to Lady Em’s bedroom. My heart thumps in my chest, a mixture of elation and nerves. She’s just beyond that door at the end of the hall. I picture her, sitting at the desk, doing whatever research she think will help in her task of taking over her little piece of immortality. Up until now, I had no idea what I’d do when I faced her. I’d been hoping the perfect idea would come to me.

  And now it does.

  I glance back and see Theo and Damien about ten feet behind me. They kept their promise to hang back. I throw them a wink and then put my finger to my lips. I turn back and walk straight up to Lady Em’s bedroom door. I remember from the first time I was here that her desk is to the right.

  I grab the doorknob and twist, then push open the door quickly.

  The curtain Theo used as a noose is still on the floor, crumpled into a pile. She hasn’t even touched it. Has she noticed it?

  Lady Em sits at her desk, her short black hair wispy around her face. Her chin rests in her elbow as she looks over a spiral notebook and a newspaper. She doesn’t even look up.

  I have come to kill her, and she’s not looking up.

  “Do you treat all your visitors with such apathy?” I ask. My voice rings out through the quiet room. I am fully aware that Lady Em’s powers could throw my body across the room at any moment, but I’m hoping to catch her by surprise.

  She looks up slowly, almost as if she’s bored. Her eyes meet mine and there’s a slight hint of recognition behind them. I realize now that the dark circles under her eyes weren’t there last time I saw her.

  “Did you come to kill me?” she says plainly, as if my threat of death is simply a slight annoyance to her day.

  I swallow, and the right words come to me. “I know where the Dover stones are hidden.”

  She looks up suddenly, her eyes narrowing. “I know what you’re doing,” I say, standing strong and confident. “And I want to join you.”

  Chapter 28

  Lady Em closes her notebook and shoves it away. “Why would I trust you?” her voice is measured, calculating.

  I think on my feet. “Because I just walked in here alone, with nothing.” I hold up my hands. “I don’t even have a cell phone.”

  “That hardly means anything,” she says, still sitting at her desk. “I kept you locked in a room and you broke free. Why would you come back to work with me?” I’m standing just inside the doorway, knowing the guys are somewhere back in the hallway listening in.

  “Because of him,” I say, making the last word sound like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. “He broke us out, he made me go with him.” Her eyebrow quirks and I can see her getting drawn into my story. I make up more of it as I go along.

  “He forced me to do whatever he wanted,” I say. “I thought you were remarkable when I learned of your power, but all he did was talk bad about you. I thought I loved him but—” The lie sits heavy on my tongue and I don’t want to say it, but I can tell I have her full attention now. “But he didn’t love me,” I reply.

  Lady Em sits straighter in her chair. Her eyes never leave mine. “He certainly seemed like he loved you.”

  I shake my head. “It was all an act. He didn’t care about me.” I think about her history with Lord Timothy and choose my words carefully. “He has other lovers, women he cares about more than me. He just used me to do his dirty work. I was nothing more than a toy.”

  Lady Em swallows. There’s a flash of pain across her eyes. I remember what Theo told me about her making a pass at him all those years ago. Even she wasn’t immune to his gorgeous looks. She hasn’t forgotten that he rebuked her, that he turned away all of her advances no matter how beautiful she was.

  I take this thread and run with it. “He has a real lover in the Dover clan,” I say, twisting my face into a fake agony that she totally falls for. “He loves her, not me. But when I became his lifeblood up on that balcony—” I choke up as if I’m in true pain. I cover my mouth with my hand and then look at her. “I guess he realized he better keep me alive so that I keep him alive. So he pretended to care about me but he didn’t. It was all an act so he could make sure I stayed his lifeblood.”

  I hold up my wrist, turning the bracelet over. The stone sparkles in response. “I got away from him, but not before I heard them talking about your plans.”

  “And what plans do you think you know?” she asks, leaning forward.

  “The whole Rosewater clan knows it,” I say. “They’ve been talking and scheming, saying they want to kill you and take over the clan themselves.” This part isn’t a lie, of course, and it really gets her attention.

  “They know nothing,” she says with an indignant huff.

  “They know you’ve been killing immortals and taking their stones.”

  She stiffens and then her eyes narrow into slits. “You have no proof.”

  “There’s twelve sets of immortality stones in the safe in your attic.”

  She’s silent for several seconds, her expression blank. Then her lips flatten and she rises from her chair. “How did you know that?”

  “Because I’m on your side,” I say, holding out an innocent hand to stop her from doing anything. She’s still behind her desk, but now that she’s standing, my heart beats a little faster. This is going well, I just need to convince her a little more.

  “While you were gone, they had people spying on you in England. I came here to see for myself if you were really gone. I met that meat head guy who lives in the attic and he told me about the stones.”

  “I will kill him,” she says through clenched teeth.

  I try to smile but I don’t think it works. If she’d only taken five seconds to walk around her own house, she’d know this is all a lie. “It’s okay. Please let me join you. I know where Dover has hidden their stones. We can take them. We can start our own clan. I don’t need someone like Theo. I get that now. I just need to do my own thing.”

  “Why would you want to join me?”

  “Because you’re smart enough to work on your own. I should have never trusted a stupid man.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” she says, her voice softeni
ng.

  I’m not sure if she thinks she can trust me yet, but she relaxes a bit. “Where are the stones?”

  “They’re in a room under the castle.” I make it up as I go along, using my memories of the castle’s layout. Lady Em knows that castle better than I do, because she actually lived in it for years, so I shouldn’t get too detailed. I keep my voice level and hide any trace that I’m lying by looking her right in the eye. “I was there. We met Lord Marcus, and they had a meeting in the very room where the stones are held. They have them all in a display case.”

  “Guarded heavily by security,” Lady Em says.

  I nod. “Yes, but, Lord Marcus liked me. He invited me back to his chambers. He offered to make me immortal.”

  “This means nothing,” Lady Em snaps.

  “I told him I would only do it if he’d let me pick the stone myself.” I put on a sly grin and take a step forward. Lady Em doesn’t move, meaning she’s not preparing herself for an attack from me. Another stupid move on her part. “He agreed. He’s been sending me love letters, asking me to join him and become immortal.”

  “He is a snake,” she says, her lip curling. “He and his dead brother are both snakes.”

  I wonder if the dead brother she’s referring to is Timothy, but the way her demeanor turns to pure hatred tells me it probably is. I nod quickly. “I was thinking I could get him to take me down there, tell him I want some private time alone with him while I pick out my stone.”

  Her eyes fill with delight. I smile. “Little does he know, you could be right behind me, waiting for him to be off guard.” I shrug helplessly. “None of the guys in the Dover clan have powers like you do. I think you could easily get rid of him and then the stones would be ours for the taking.”

  Lady Em puts her hands on her hips. “Why should I trust you?”