In the Forests of the Night

CHAPTER 13 NOW

I WAS FOOLISH to attack him then, and am equally foolish to bait him now, but I have no other choice. I refuse to roll over and let Aubrey be king without ever challenging him.

I can sense his aura in the room but cannot see him, and he has not spoken.

Where are you, Aubrey? I ask him with my mind. Why do you hide from me?

I hear his laughing, taunting voice in my head; it is a voice I have come to hate with all my mind, all my strength, and all my soul. He says only four words, not even a sentence.

One line of a poem.

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright…

I scream the wordless cry of the eagle, the hunting cry of the diving hawk, the angered cry of a caged beast, and I hear Aubrey laugh in my mind. I know where he was as I hunted on his land.

Even as he laughs I change my shape to a golden hawk that flies from that room in her animal rage and lands inside the tiger's cage at the zoo. The sign, 'Panthera tigris tigris,' has fallen, and its wooden post is snapped in two like a twig. The metal bars of the tiger's cage are bent. The guard is lying on the ground, pale and motionless.

I do not care about the guard or the sign, only about Tora, the one creature I have loved since Alexander's death. Tora, who is lying on her side, her paws bound, with a knife in her heart. She was born free, and deserved to live so. Instead she lived in a cage and was killed, bound and helpless. This more than anything makes me feel as if the knife was planted in my own heart instead of hers.

I shift back into my usual form and pull the knife from her, screaming another wordless cry of rage and grief. Tearing the ropes from her paws, I weep at each golden hair that has fallen from her and at each black hair that has forever lost its shine. I weep — weep as I did not when I lost my brother and my life. I weep until my thoughts run dark and my tears run dry.

Love is the strongest emotion any creature can feel except for hate, but hate can't hurt you. Love, and trust, and friendship, and all the other emotions humans value so much, are the only emotions that can bring pain. Only love can break a heart into so many pieces.

The greatest pain I have ever felt rode on the back of love. I loved Alexander, and every injury he received seemed reflected onto me. His death tore my heart out and bled it dry, and now Aubrey has used my love for Tora to push the blade in deeper.

This is why, I have learned, the strongest of the vampires keep all these emotions at arm's length: because they are weaknesses, and if you have weaknesses you can be taken down with all the other prey.

Close to dawn I lift my head, my long golden hair blending with Tora's tiger fur. I do not think, but add the black stripes to my own tiger-gold hair.

'Look, my beautiful,' I whisper. 'I have stolen your stripes. I will wear them so that your beauty will not be forgotten. My tiger, my Tora, my beautiful—I will not allow this crime to go unpunished.' My eyes are dry but sparkle with anger and determination. 'I will be sure he is truly dead before he takes another life I love.'

I am focused inward, on Tora, and hear no one approach me. However, I feel a brush of air against my hair, the aura of some visitor. My head snaps up, but I see no one. Whoever was there is gone, leaving nothing save a slip of paper next to my hand.

I pick up the paper, my eyes caught on the name that is scrawled across the top in black ink: Rachel. I cannot read the words below, which have run together where water has fallen onto the ink. Not water, I think, realizing how strongly the aura is mixed in with them— tears.

I stare at the name for a moment, then crush the note in my hand, a fine tremor of rage going through me at this creature who dares to taunt me so. I do not recognize the aura on the paper; I do not know who sent it.

'Rachel is dead,' I say aloud. 'I am not Rachel—she died three hundred years ago.'

The tearstains on the paper—whose are they? What human learned of Rachel and was so pained by her story that he sent me this? Or is this note a sick joke of Aubrey's, another way to scar my heart?

'I don't want your games!' I shout. If the one who left this reminder is still near, let him confront me.

No one answers.

CHAPTER 14 NOW

My past and my present have combined to taunt me. Shaking with grief and anger, I return to Ambrosia. I glance around the room, checking for Aubrey. I do not see him.

I come to this place seeking a diversion. The ghost of Rachel cannot follow me here.

I see my image reflected in a crystal glass someone has left on a counter. My reflection is a misty apparition, but I can see Tora's markings in my hair and I laugh. This is something Aubrey will never take from me.

In this moment I feel like exactly what I am: a wild child of the darkness. A dangerous shadow in a mood to make trouble.

I look around the room again. Smiling, I toss my tiger-striped hair back from my face and perch on the counter. The girl behind it, a younger fledgling, opens her mouth as if to tell me to get down but then thinks better of it.

'What do you see, Tiger?' someone asks me, and I turn toward him. 'You look around this room as if you saw it differently from all of us. What do you see?'

I recognize him, and I know he recognizes me. He is Ather's blood brother, Jager. People say he treats all life as a game that must be played—a cruel and deadly game in which whoever is winning makes the rules.

Jager appears eighteen, with dark skin and deep brown hair. His eyes are emerald green, and they reflect the dim light like a cat's. I know it is the same illusion as my hair. All vampires have black eyes, and Jager had dark eyes even when he was alive — he was born nearly five thousand years ago, in Egypt, and watched the great pyramids rise.

'I see someone who does not show his true eyes,' I observe. 'What do you see?'

'I see that my warnings to Ather and Aubrey were justified,' he answers.

'Was it you who warned Ather I would be strong? '

' It was I who warned her that you would be stronger than she.'

He sits on the counter beside me, and the girl behind it gives up, moving to a table on the other side of the room.

'Ather is weak,' I comment. 'It is one of her flaws. She changes those who will be stronger than her, because it makes others think she has more power than she does.'

'She isn't the only one you are stronger than, Risika,' he answers. 'Aubrey isn't often challenged, because people know he is powerful, and they are afraid of him. He has you afraid of him, although he is not much stronger than you are, if at all.'

'Oh, really?' I ask, not believing him. 'Then we must be speaking of different Aubreys, because I lost the last time I fought the Aubrey I know.'

'You could hide that scar with a thought. You have the power to do that,' Jager says, changing the subject.

'I could,' I answer. 'But I don't.'

'You wear it like a warning—a sign that you will avenge it.'

'I will avenge more than this scar, Jager.'

'When?' he presses. 'Will you wait for him to start the music? Or will you start it yourself?'

'I prefer to kill in silence.'

Jager gazes at me and smiles. 'Happy hunting, Risika.' A moment later he is gone.