Blenda watched as a smile slithered across Kane’s lips before he gave her a reply.
“Perhaps.” He replied tentatively. “So, what happens if I am?” He asked her, and she gave no reply. She had actually none to give him, other than the fact that he would be an added worry to her lifemate.
But she was puzzled that he did not appear as foul to her as the other vampires she had encountered over the centuries. Was he so good at illusion that even an ancient such as she could not recognize what was foul and wholly evil? His power was very disturbing to her.
His broad shoulders shrugged in a lazy ripple. “I do not allow others to interfere in our game. You are an anchor he weighs himself down with. A pawn I can use against him when I so desire. What is between my brother and me shall remain so always. Any who dares to interfere, hunter or vampire or woman, will die at my choosing.” He replied, giving her the answer to her first question.
She tilted her chin. “What are you going to do with me?” She asked.
His perfect mouth slanted into a brief, humorless smile. “Call him to your aid. You would not want me to make you my slave. Call him.” His voice was pleasing and subtle, an insidious whisper of purity. He seemed not to move, yet he was so close she could smell his scent, clean, not foul. She could feel his power. How could he be a vampire? Of course she had heard the slave-word, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that Kane was playing with her. But then Kane never played. So, what could this mean?
Blenda swallowed hard and took a step backward, shaking her head to be sure she wasn’t under compulsion.
“Never. There is nothing you can do to make me betray him, not of my own free will. Dobah is a great man and my lifemate. I willingly exchange my life for his.” She answered finally, shifting her thoughts about him aside.
She waited to be struck down. There was a silence, long and empty. She couldn’t hear him breathing, couldn’t hear his heart beating, if he had a heart. Her long lashes fluttered as she regarded him, the master vampire if he was one, standing so motionless, looking like the statue of an ancient god. It took a moment to realize there was no entrapment in his voice, just plain black magic. His voice simply made one want to comply with his every wish.
“Why aren’t you forcing me to do your bidding?” she asked curiously, sweeping one hand nervously through her long blue-black hair.
“I do not need the aid of women in my battle.” He replied.
She felt a whip of contempt in his words. Still the same old Kane.
“I find it rather astonishing that my brother has grown so weak that he had allowed you to convince him to come here, after my dire warnings. He never disobeyed me. Or was it because I was not present? Here is dangerous, a good hideout for vampires at night.” He continued. His black eyes were steady on her face. “But you already know that, Blenda.”
She shivered, running her hands up and down her arms. She was suddenly cold. It was his voice again. The tone was exactly the same. Soft. Pure. Beautiful. Yet somehow she felt threatened now. And worse than being threatened, she felt the heavy weight of his rebuke. It shouldn’t have meant anything to her. He was the undead. Yet she felt as if she were a young girl censured by the Prince of their people. It hurt and it was humiliating. Blenda could not meet those empty black eyes. Instead she found herself looking down at the toes of her shoes. She wanted to make him understand, yet she didn’t understand her own feelings. How could she possibly explain them to someone who had no emotions at all?
“I would stay and play longer, but the foolish one is forgetting all that was taught him.” Kane said the words softly as he shimmered for a moment, his once-solid form transparent so that she could see the trees right through him. There was a peculiar prism effect she had never seen before right before he dissolved into droplets of mist and streamed through the fog-filled terrain away from her.
Blenda let out her breath slowly and relaxed muscles she hadn’t realized were cramped and taut. At once she reached for Dobah to warn him about Kane. If the rumors were true, then he had to be careful.
Dobah was in a desperate battle, whirling among the three lesser vampires, all minions of the one Kane had destroyed. They were darting in, seeking to wear him down with long, razor-sharp talons, attempting to slice small, deep cuts in his flesh to weaken him.
But she wasn’t deterred. He had to know.
“Kane is here.” She mentioned.
Soft laughter echoed through her mind. At first she thought Kane had somehow managed to get into her head, but then she realized he was in Dobah’s mind. Because she shared Dobah’s thoughts and memories, she could “hear” their strange conversation.
“You have forgotten all that I taught you, brother. Why would you allow these lesser vampires to surround you this way?”
But Doban was silent.
Kane shimmered into solid form between Dobah and the largest and most aggressive of the three undead. Dobah launched himself at the smallest vampire, the one directly behind him, moving so quickly he had plunged his fist into the chest and extracted the pulsing heart while the vampire was still staring in shock at Kane. Dobah was on the second vampire before he had dropped the heart of the first one. The creature screamed his defiance, lashing out, but was far too late. Dobah had taken his heart and whirled away, even as bolt after bolt of jagged lightning beat at the earth, incinerating the two bodies and their tainted hearts. It happened so quickly, Blenda was unable to comprehend how Dobah had done it.
There was no thought, no plan in his mind that she could read, not even a communication between the twin brothers, yet even as Dobah had used Kane as a distraction, so had Kane used Dobah. He had attacked the largest of the undead while it was gaping in horror at Dobah. The third body was lying shriveled and lifeless on the ground while Kane tossed the tainted heart into the fiery ball of energy that Dobah was using to destroy the other two. It was then Doban suddenly comprehended that his brother, the mortal enemy of their people if the rumors were true, had aided him in his battle. Blenda read his guilt, his annoyance with himself that he had not taken the opportunity to destroy Doban then. He was so accustomed to working with his twin, he had simply acted on instinct.
“I don’t get why you are angry, brother. Are you that desperate to kill me?” Kane asked, then cackled in a pure laughter which Blenda found weird. What kind of vampire was this? He wasn’t even moving to attack her lifemate.
Shouldn’t he be doing so?
“You are now the undead. You are the master vampire then, considering the level of your intelligence and hunting expertise. You are a threat to our world. I have to kill you. Let me do so. You promised to let me to do that, whenever you turned and surrendered to the darkness. What changed your mind? Do you want others to do so?” Dobah replied, ending his statement with a question.
“So, you think I am the undead?” Kane asked, folding his strong arms across her chest.
“You declared it yourself. When I asked you, you kept dodging the question.” Doban said, with a shrug, walking towards Blenda who stood, watching the similarities between the twins that never ceases to fascinate her.
Blenda breathed in deeply, when she felt Dobah’s hands around her waist. She was safe, for the moment at least.
If Kane should throw out a battle, she was sure that her lifemate wouldn’t leave unscathed, if he should succeed in killing Kane. Doban was tired as it was. He wasn’t ready for another fight.
There was a deep silence, nobody spoke.
“Tell me Kane, are you now one of they undead, as those filthy creatures brag about? One had talked about it, even while I was drawing his heart out of his chest.” Dobah mentioned, his eyes watching steadily his favorite person for a very long time before Blenda had come into the picture.
“I would have, If not for Freya and Dobah.” Kane replied, a genuine smile slithering across his lips.
Blenda held her stomach and sighed in relief.
He wasn’t the undead, at least not yet. She just wished he could find his lifemate already, so that her lifemate would stop worrying about him. He was playing with her then. A short muse escaped her lips. Yodah must be having an influence on him.
“You know Freya?” Dobah asked, also relieved. You could see the happiness dancing in his eyes.
“Yeah. The both are inseparable. Best friends according to them. They visit always. Yodah thinks that if he visits the more, it will prolong my decision of giving in to the darkness.” Kane replied, sighing tiredly now.
“I’m tired Dobah. I don’t think I can hold it any longer. You should kill me after we are done searching for Yodah.” Kane mentioned, startling Dobah and Blenda.
“What are you talking about? Where is my son? Where is Freya?” Blenda asked, her voice shaking in tremor.
For Kane to approach them about this, it meant that it was serious, and that the former had tried searching for her son, and hadn’t found him.