Maybe more than any other thing the sight of his feet did her in. Something inside her began to scream. She arched her neck and let the sound pour out of her. She screamed until her lungs ached and her vocal cords could take no more.
When she stopped, she was staring up at the tall domed ceiling at least five stories up.
And the crowd was finally silent.
When she looked back at Josh, it was Daniel who caught her eye. His gaze had a foggy appearance and his lips were slack. No doubt he was euphoric because she’d just given him exactly what he craved the most: the suffering of others, the pain of others.
When she glanced at Josh again, his eyes were tight and he mouthed something. It took her several seconds before she understood he was saying, simply, Mom. She nodded and using her telepathy said, I’m okay now. I love you, Josh. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
He didn’t say anything in response, but held his lips together tightly, two white lines.
So here she was, Lily Haven of Deer Valley, Arizona, and of Manhattan, soon to be executed, standing halfway between her kidnapped son and the man she loved, with no way out.
The sounds of Lily screaming her anguish at the sight of her son had quieted Adrien, had brought him out of his rage and into the present moment. His senses sharpened as the emotions of the now silent spectators hummed through his veins.
The guards grabbed him once more. Though he resisted, he was quickly overpowered, picked up, and thrown onto a hard slab of granite, one of two altar-like tables in the Pit. More chains were wrapped around him, securing him, chains that held Daniel’s powerful signature and kept him immobile.
He stared up at the tall, curved black ceiling, his mind rolling backward to being a child. How many times had he been in this position, chained to a table and subjected to knife cuts, delivered close-up so that Daniel could watch him suffer? How many times? A hundred? A thousand?
And how much Lily’s screams had fed the beast that lived inside Daniel, the one that needed the pain of others to thrive and to be satisfied.
He didn’t want his father to win so Adrien lay very still, gathering his thoughts. He had to figure this out. He’d gained Ancestral status. Surely there was some way to access his power and overcome the chains.
The guards moved Lily in the direction of the second table. Surprisingly, mother and son didn’t speak, but then what could be said? He’d watched Josh’s reaction to his mother’s screams, he even remembered what that was like. How young he had been when his own mother had screamed her pain, her anguish.
But he wouldn’t bring those memories to this table.
This table belonged to now and not to the past. This table was about creating a new set of memories.
He glanced at his father, who smiled. Of course.
Join me, Adrien. Daniel’s voice pierced his mind. And all this will end. I will even spare the human’s life and her son’s. Just say you will serve me and I will end this suffering.
For a split second he considered agreeing to it, if for no other reason than to spare Lily and Josh, but reason returned.
He also knew that Daniel wouldn’t keep his word. He’d never let Lily and Josh go.
Adrien responded with a single word: Never.
How unfortunate, but have it as you will.
Lily stood beside the granite slab, a guard on each side of her, as she waited to be chained to her place of execution. She didn’t look at Josh again. How could she without falling into another round of screaming anguish.
Quill’s voice, loud and strong, sounded through the arena as he stated again the reason for the execution, the illegal hunt for the extinction weapon.
The crowd responded with shouts and condemnation.
Her eyes began to burn. Once more she looked up at the gleaming black dome of the ceiling. She had heard that in a spiritual sense obsidian meant “truth.”
What was the truth of this situation? Why was she here? What had gotten her here? Why was she trapped in a way that prevented her from helping either her son or the man she loved?
From the time of her husband’s and daughter’s deaths, grief had dominated her life, a pain so deep that for a long time, until she’d been contacted with news that Josh was alive, she’d felt nothing but a numbing pain without end. She had lived that pain and it had ridden her hard, for months turned to years.
Meeting Adrien had been like setting a lit match to a gasoline-soaked bonfire of sexual and emotional need. Her relationship with him had simply exploded until now that bonfire burned in her heart.
She loved him, a new love born out of this impossible situation.
Grief was still with her and she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would grieve for those she’d lost until she drew her last breath.
But the chains had birthed something new in her. She’d come alive in the course of the past few nights, alive in ways never before imagined, bursting with strength and passion, and the awareness that she was bound to a vampire in a way that gave her unexpected powers and the ability to live in a secret vampire world.
In a sudden revelation, she understood the lesson of the chains, of her bondage to Adrien, of what they’d become over the past three nights: Their real power came from working together, back and forth, functioning as a team.
But in what way could she work with him now?
She glanced down at the double-chain wrapped around her wrist and began to loosen and unfurl it until it hung in a long loop from her hand. Time seemed to slow. The double-chain, once she put it on, would mean a final commitment to Adrien, to being with him forever, inseparable. There would be no way to remove this chain, to leave Adrien behind, and she’d never be able to return to the human world in any normal sense.
Yet as she stared at the chain and heard the crowd as through a fog calling for her death, she knew this was where she wanted to be, with Adrien, nothing held back. From her right, she saw a manacle lifted in her direction as the guard prepared to bind her and secure her to the granite table.
In a swift move she flipped the double-chain over her head and felt it fall around her neck, as the guard seized her wrist and secured her with the heavy wrought iron.
Immediately the chain began to vibrate. Power swirled around her.
“Lily, what have you done?”
She met Adrien’s gaze and smiled. What I should have done the moment Gabriel gave me the chain.
But you’ll be bound to me permanently.
She smiled. I don’t want to be anywhere else.
In that moment she opened her heart to Adrien as she never had before. She let all her grief go as she focused her thoughts on him, letting her love flow in his direction, letting him know that she loved him more than life itself.
All this she sent through the chains that bound them.
Adrien shifted as best he could so that he could see Lily, to watch her as the double-chain came to life between them, a sealing of their fates together, now and forever.
But mostly he felt her love, her eyes glowing with emotion, with all that she felt for him. It meant more to him than words could ever express that she would have donned a chain that bound her to him. Even if this was to be the last moment of his life, and hers, that she had done this thing filled his heart with joy.
“I love you,” she called to him. “And I always will.”
“I love you, too.”
“Silence,” Daniel shouted.
Adrien felt the weight of the chains on his body, chains he had known ever since he could remember, maybe even since birth. Yes, he’d been born in chains and lived chained up, whether mentally or more recently chained in a cavern and tortured with whips and clubs.
Now he felt the chains again, so heavy that they pressed into his soul and mired him in the moment, sank him deep. He couldn’t believe he was here again, knowing not only that he would die soon, but that the woman he had come to love over the past several days would also die—along with the boy she’d given birth to ten years ago, her beloved son, the remnant of her family.
Adrien turned to look at his sire, at the man who had spawned him, who had given him life, standing in his arrogance beside the boy.
Daniel looked back, his eyes glittering, his desire to inflict pain rising once more.
Adrien knew that look well.
Pain always followed.
He closed his eyes, unwilling to let Daniel feed off his suffering and pain. Instead, he focused on Lily and her love, and on the chains vibrating powerfully at his neck. He opened himself to experiencing what she felt right now. What came to him was her love, that she found him worthy and noble, that in this moment nothing else mattered. He felt her strength as well, that despite the horror of the Pit she could reach out to him, willing him to know that she loved him, though she would soon die.
That love, which she gave so easily, which was just who she was, began to move through his soul like a healing river.
For the first time in his life, he let his rage go, all that horrible anger that had lived in him like a festering wound.
He allowed other feelings in, the better ones, the ones he’d learned from those vampires who lived in close-knit communities, like Alfonse and Giselle, and more recently from Lily, about love, about forgiveness, about opening his heart to another person and trusting that good things would follow.
Rage was all he had ever really known, a profound rage born at his birth and built with the fuel of every evil deed Daniel had committed against him and against his brothers.
Yes, he let that go, all of it, let it drain out of his body like the poison it was. He saw it sinking deeper and deeper into the granite altar he was chained to, deeper and deeper. He let love wash through him, a cleansing force that built a new strength in his body, fired his muscles as it cleansed his mind and soul.
The part of him that was now an Ancestral vampire responded, adding a new layer of power and intention. Light shone in his mind, another purifying force that wiped the slate clean, that took all his hatred, all his anger, and transformed it into … purpose.
That was what he felt, an intense, searing purpose.
And his purpose in this moment was simple: to save the one he loved and the one she loved.
Power flowed into his muscles, new power, Ancestral power. But there was something more, and this was Lily’s gift to him as the added power of her double-chain ripped through him. The base of the granite table began to vibrate—then the whole structure started to rise into the air.