Page 47 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
“I’m doing this, Leander. You know how much I love you, but I’m not asking your permission. This tribe is my responsibility, our survival is my responsibility, and I’m not just going to sit by helplessly while Caesar tears us apart and makes the world hate us. I’m going to spy on him and his little pack of rats, and find out what their plan is, so we can formulate a plan of our own. I’m sorry you don’t approve, but I’m doing it. This isn’t a negotiation.”
His eyes flashed. “And what about the girls? They’re still breast-feeding—”
“Grayson Sutherland’s wife is still breast-feeding, too.”
Grayson was an Assembly member, one of the few families left at Sommerley who’d be making the trip with them to Manaus. His wife had conveniently given birth the month prior, and had agreed to care for Honor and Hope in Jenna’s absence.
Leander’s face hardened. “A wet nurse. I see you’ve thought of everything.”
“I have. And everything will be fine, you’ll see. Please, just trust me.”
They stared at one another while the long-case clock chimed the hour. When the doleful tolls faded into silence, Jenna asked quietly, “Did you think I’d just stand by and let him walk all over us? Did you think when my Gifts returned I wouldn’t retaliate?”
Leander blinked. His lips parted. Dread leached the color from his face. “You can’t kill him, Jenna. He can’t be killed, you know that. Don’t even try; you’ll only end up getting hurt. Or worse!”
“Everything that can be made can be unmade. We just don’t know how Caesar can be unmade yet, but he can. He might be immortal, but he isn’t invincible. Even Superman has his Kryptonite—”
“Superman is a comic book character! Caesar is real!”
“He’s got a weakness, Leander. I know it. And I’m going to find out what it is.”
In a hoarse, disbelieving voice, he asked, “Even if it kills you?”
Yes.
The word was unspoken, but Leander saw it in her eyes. In the way her chin lifted, the way her back straightened, the way her gaze, always so soft when she looked at him, turned steely.
Yes, she would die for them. For her beloved, beautiful husband and her two new babies and this clan of magical, mystical beings who’d accepted her as their own, even though she was only half their world. Only half their Blood.
“It’s my responsibility. More than anyone, you understand responsibility. If the roles were reversed, you’d be doing the exact same thing.”
He closed his eyes. Jenna knew he knew she spoke the truth, and she also knew he hated to admit it.
“If anything happens to you, it will end me. You do realize that, don’t you?” he whispered. He opened his eyes, and they blazed. “I won’t go on without you. I can’t.”
She stepped into the circle of his outstretched arms and rested her cheek against his chest. He buried his face in her hair and they clung to each other, hearts pounding, the dark, uncertain future rushing toward them at the speed of a runaway train.
Jenna gently kissed her love on the cheek. “You’ll never be without me. Even when I’m far away, my heart is always with you. My heart will always only be with you.”
Then, without waiting for a response, without giving him the opportunity to try to argue her out of what she needed to do, she Shifted to Vapor.
It rose to a burning bright peak within her, effortless as breathing, smooth as silk. From one heartbeat to the next her body transformed from cumbersome flesh and blood and bone to cool, lovely mist, weightless and wonderful. As it always did when she left her physical self behind, a song of joy pierced straight through her, thrilling and impossibly sweet.
Goodbye, my love. Wish me luck; I’m going to need it.
As she surged in a glittering gray plume toward the window that stood ajar at the end of the room, Leander was left holding up her empty dress in the stillness and splendor of the East Library, watching her go with haunted, anguished eyes.
Like an arrow sure of its mark, the half-Blood Queen of the Ikati shot out into the morning sky.
“Before we do this, Red,” Hawk said, his voice low and serious, his face a mask of stone, “there are three things you need to remember if you’re going to get back to New York in one piece.”
That sounded ominous enough to Jack, but his manner made her even more anxious. She’d never seen him this . . . wired.
After her emotional admission a day and a half ago, before she’d gone to bathe in the pool beneath the waterfall, they’d settled again into silence. He’d politely requested that she let him stand nearby—back turned—to make sure nothing snuck up on her during her swim, and he’d kept his word. Crouched on an outcropping of rock just above the warm, clear waters, he’d never once looked her way . . . and she’d checked repeatedly.
But his gaze had never strayed from some fixed point in the distance, far overhead.
Following her blurted admission about her brother, she found both Hawk’s request to stand guard and his respect for her privacy deeply touching.
