Page 93 of Kiss the Dawn
“No. Of course she wouldn’t heal it.” He said it as if he was correcting me, his student. As if we were back at headquarters in history class, and my eyes burned for the innocence of that time. “No, Orina. This isn’t about her personally. It’s about her power. We plan to summon her and trap her in the golem that we’ve created. She will be in our control. Ours to command.”
“As new gods, we will make this world a better place,” Christian said. “Not just for vampires but for all supernaturals.”
“And you believe that?” Padma cried. “Micah, howcan you believe that? How can you be sure that this bloodthirsty vampire won’t enslave all of humanity?”
Micah met Christian’s gaze with a smile. “Because Christian isn’t the one in charge. I am.”
How couldI have ever thought him handsome? How could I have ever imagined myself in love with this man? All I saw now was the cruel smile on his face and the manic gleam in his eyes.
“I’ve seen how the supernaturals dominate man,” Micah said. “How they use us and abuse us. How powerless we are against them. Then I joined the Order and found out about the curse. So I did a little digging—well, a lot of digging and discovered a ritual. One that had been used a long time ago to summon Loviator. One that the Tepes brothers believed to have been destroyed, and with the help of a few like-minded individuals, I was able to reshape it for our purpose.”
He was basically saying supernaturals sucked, but Christian was just standing there and nodding along like an obedient child. “What do you get from this, Christian?”
He smiled down at me. “Peace. Freedom from the curse of bloodlust.”
“What? I thought you praised Ezekiel as a god. You built a church for him.”
“I did what I needed to do to fit in. To make my brethren believe I was a believer, but Ezekiel is a monster. He’s the beast that infected us all. That brought death to so many. I won’t be thisthingany longer. Micah will cure us once he is a god.”
Micah a god? By using Loviator. By becoming her puppet master. “Did you send Ruby to stop me breaking the curse?”
“Ruby was a devout believer,” Micah said, his tone tight. “She was mourned.”
Ruby had come to us as Ariella—a vein gifted to Ezekiel. She’d pretended to be Arabella reborn. Arabella, the woman that Ezekiel had loved centuries ago. The woman that had been trapped in Loviator’s prison with him. Arabella was the only soul that could break the curse. Ruby had tricked us all, but Holly had felt the glamour clouding Ruby and we’d figured out that she was an impostor and that I…I was the real Arabella.
Micah had orchestrated that deception along with sending the cold ones to the school, no doubt. “The souls of children, Christian? Really?” I gave him a scathing look.
“That was not sanctioned,” Micah said. “Loviator chose to do that herself. She was getting stronger.”
“So you knew I was the curse breaker and sent me here anyway?”
“No, I sent you here so you’d be where I needed you, protected for when I needed you.”
“Under my watchful eye,” Christian said proudly.
“The curse breaker part was unexpected,” Micah said. “But it all worked out.”
He’d been keeping tabs on me through his vampire spies. I guessed the few times we’d been seen in social settings, the possessive way Ezekiel behaved, was enough for them to deduce who I was.
“I would say the curse being broken is in our favor, wouldn’t you?” Christian said to Micah. “This way Loviator is in her prison proper, and we can have full control of pulling her out and into our golem before she can fight back.”
“I suppose it is,” Micah said. His gaze dropped to me, then to something in his hand, out of view so I couldn’t see it.
My breath quivered in my lungs because there was no more stalling. It was time to ask the question that I’d been sitting on, the one that would reveal my fate. “How do I fit into all of this?”
Behind me, someone began to sob.
It sounded like Merry, and it struck me that they already knew the answer.
They knew my fate, and it was bad.
Micah slowly raised his hand, and I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t the strange large iron key. “This is the activator,” he said. “It will begin the ritual and bond me to the golem, making me its master, and thus, Loviator’s too. The souls will be drawn from the bodies around us to fuel the spell, andyou…” There was real sadness in his eyes as he looked down at me. “Your blood will seal her fate, locking her inside her new tomb.”
“My blood?” My throat went dry. “How much blood?”
“I’m sorry, Orina. I’m going to need it all.”
Chapter 34
