The Well of Truth

  The Well of Truth

  Kindred Blood, Book Two

  Amber Riley

  iUniverse, Inc.

  Bloomington

  Copyright © 2010 by Amber Riley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4502-8764-7 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4502-8766-1 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4502-8765-4 (ebook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  iUniverse rev. date: 01/11/2011

  For Kathy and Mark

  The best aunt and uncle a girl could ask for

  “Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths.”

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 1

  No one knows what happens to a vampire when it dies. Maybe it goes to hell, or maybe it gets stuck in purgatory. Maybe it doesn’t go anywhere and that would be the end. Nothingness. I think that would be the worst. The complete and utter lack of existence frightened me the most.

  That explained why the armrests on the Vatican’s private jet had permanent dents in the shape of hands. My hands. It was the reason my lungs hurt from holding my breath for the last eight hours while we fought against severe turbulence thousands of feet above ground, and the reason why my eyes were pressed shut so hard that I was giving myself a headache.

  It was my first plane ride, and I was 99 percent sure it was my last. The wind had knocked the jet around like a small child’s toy. I was certain that at any moment we were going to go hurdling back to the earth and end up in a fiery explosion. I wasn’t sure if vampires survived plane crashes. The pressure of impact, balls of fire … I, for one, never wanted to find out.

  If I had never allowed the Iustitia to talk me into going to Italy in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to worry about it. The Iustitia, the Pope’s army of vampire hunters, were bred and raised for hundreds of years, with the sole purpose of eliminating our existence. They were extremely good at what they did, which made me wonder why they needed our help at all.

  Rome was off-limits to vampires. Nothing undead had stepped foot in the city for centuries. Until now. Apparently, they had become so overrun that even the famous Iustitia couldn’t handle the cleanup. I would have liked to have met the idiot who thought seeking help from four of the oldest vampires was a good idea. I may have become a traitor over 150 years ago when I ran from the master vampire, Phoenix, but I didn’t want to stick my nose in problems that weren’t directly mine.

  But, I was. I blamed my conscience.

  “Kaden, you can open your eyes now,” a low voice whispered.

  I pried them open carefully to reveal a blurry figure across from me. Sullivan, my oldest friend, came into focus after a few blinks. He was wearing a ribbed turtleneck, and his shoulder-length brown hair was pulled back with a rubber band. The pupils in his gray eyes were dilated with stress. We had been through a lot together since I was turned over six centuries ago, but nothing quite like what we were getting ourselves into this time. Vampires working with vampire hunters—who worked for the Catholic church—was as bizarre as it sounded.

  I turned my head, chancing a look out the window to make sure we had really made it safely onto solid ground. I met my reflection in the Plexiglas. My black hair was falling forward, skimming my pale forehead and tickling my lashes. My light blue eyes were dull with concern, and my nostrils were flared with fear. It wasn’t my most masculine moment.

  I blinked, looking past my own face. We were sitting on the runway of the airport in Rome. Large drops of water pounded against the aluminum around us, leaving a cold, wet feeling in the air. I pulled in as much as my lungs could hold and released it slowly, looking about the cabin for the first time. Everything was beige, from the seats to the walls to the small tables. The only color came from the red light strips on the floor.

  Max, our own personal Iustitia travel guide, was sitting next to Sullivan. He was holding his stomach with both hands, dark eyes strained, taking shallow breaths through his mouth. He looked completely different in a suit and tie than he did in street clothes. The boyish charm he carried when he was pretending to be a bartender at my club in Manhattan was gone, along with his fake Southern accent. Now he looked like a mature adult with closely buzzed black hair and designer clothes.

  “What?” he asked when he caught me staring at him. “I get motion sickness.”

  He seemed to have found a voice, and a personality, after we agreed to return to Rome with him. It was much better than the silent version that took off running whenever I appeared. He even came by my house every night for two weeks until the travel plans were set, but I credited that to the notion we might change our minds. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

  “I didn’t say a word,” I murmured, brushing the tips of my dark hair from my eyes.

  Max stared at me like he wanted to say something more, but thought better of the idea. “We’re here,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “No kidding. What gave you that idea?” Flo shouted right back. “Stu, I swear if you do that one more time I’m going to cut your hands off myself.”

  Stu’s soft chuckle was barely audible above the sound of the jet engines. The two of them had been bickering since we boarded. It wasn’t any different than usual—they were constantly at each other’s throats. They were like a pair of dysfunctional siblings with fangs. Stu had gotten a kick out of instigating fights with her for hundreds of years, but we usually weren’t forced to listen to them.

  “Sorry,” he insisted. His brown hair was spiked up tonight, but it suited him. He was adaptable to almost any type of character. I had seen him dressed as everything from a successful entrepreneur to a pimp. With honey eyes and a set of dimples, it was hard for people to resist him, no matter the role he played. “It was a fraudulent slip.”

  “Fraudulent slip, my—”

  “Okay, kids.” Reece stood up and stretched. He was wearing a bright green Mountain Dew sh
irt that complimented his light hair. A black microfiber pillow was wrapped around his neck. He used to look like the perfect college kid, but stress had put a strain on his face over the last few weeks. Werewolves weren’t immortal, but they aged at a fraction of the human rate. Even with everything that happened, he still didn’t look anywhere near his nine decades. “You woke me up a hundred times. Cool it,” he warned.

  “Whoops.” Stu laughed again, louder this time, and there was a loud slap.

  Flo bolted out of her seat and moved back a row to inhabit Reece’s now empty one. Her petite body only took up half of the cushion, and she scowled, looking like an angry doll with blonde hair down to her waist and big blue eyes.

  “What?” she snapped at me as I craned my neck around. “I warned him.”

  There was a loud grunt from beside her. Alex stood, ducking so his head didn’t hit the overhead compartment. His green eyes were bloodshot, and a ribbed design was imprinted in his tanned cheek from the sleeve of his sweater. He rested one elbow on the headrest and blinked slowly at Reece, his alpha wolf for the trip, who simply shrugged in response.

  Sid, the true alpha, had stayed in New York to rebuild the werewolf pack. That left us with just the two of them to make sure we weren’t staked in the middle of the day. I hoped it was enough. Reece knew how to fight. Alex, on the other hand, was young. He wasn’t the most experienced warrior, but he was overly protective of Lyn. I could trust him with her.

  How Lyn had managed to talk me into letting her come in the first place was still a mystery. I completely lacked justification for it. As if practically kidnapping her, feeding from her, almost getting her killed, and then making a failed attempt to erase her memory wasn’t enough. No. Now I was dragging her halfway around the world to a foreign country where even the Iustitia were having problems surviving the supernatural infestation. A regular human walking out onto the frontline was suicide. Or murder, and I was the responsible party. It depended on how you wanted to look at it.

  She wrestled with the blue and gray book bag that she had shoved beneath her seat. It was caught on something, but she was too frazzled to make her fingers work. They shook and pulled weakly on the fabric. I reached over and grabbed the strap just above her hand.

  She sat up, her long, brown hair falling in her face, and gave me a nervous laugh. Her perfect smile and wide brown eyes held me immobile for a moment. Then I remembered myself and unhooked the bag. I pulled it out, handing it to her. She took it from me by the top handle and gathered it into her arms, hugging it to her chest.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, her grip tightening. She wasn’t all right, but we had just spent hours trapped in a giant flying death trap. I would wait and see how she felt in the morning before taking it personally.

  I took a deep breath and unhooked my seatbelt. Max was already making his way toward the exit. I knew we had to follow him, and that there was a strict time schedule to stick to, but I hesitated. The jet was the last thing separating us from forbidden territory. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

  Reece walked by me, and then Alex, with his hood pulled up over his head. He glared sideways at me as he waited to go down the steps onto the runway, his eyes piercing into mine. He should have been over his issues with me for biting Lyn, and he might have been, if she wasn’t there. But, I would just have to learn to live with the dirty looks and snide remarks for now. He might not have been a forgiving man, but I was putting a lot of faith in him to keep her alive when I couldn’t.

  “I think we’re supposed to go with them,” Sullivan said.

  We continued to sit there in silence. It seemed like ages before they had the stairs lowered. The rain became louder and more vivid. The smell of wet pavement wafted into the jet, along with a hint of fuel and an irritating stickiness in the air.

  “We’re going to bypass customs,” Max said, waiting at the door. “Just get into the limo waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and it will take us to the apartment.”

  There was a long pause. He opened his mouth a few times like he wanted to add something else, but finally decided it was best to keep quiet. With a heavy sigh, he stepped aside and held his arm out toward the door. Reece disappeared into the storm first, but Alex lingered.

  He tore his gaze from me and, in an instant, was smiling at Lyn like someone had flipped a switch. “Come on.”

  Lyn looked to me and I held back a groan. Part of me knew she would prefer to go with Alex. She was still angry with me, and could hold a grudge better than anyone I knew, but one stipulation to her coming was to stay with me whenever she could.

  Alex was just trying to play games with me. I had news for him. She wasn’t going out there without me. We didn’t know what was waiting for us. It was my responsibility to keep her alive, even if I sometimes had to temporarily hand that job over to him.

  I got out of my seat, stretched my legs, and turned to grab my bag out of the overhead bin. The top of my head skimmed the ceiling. Stepping to the seat in front of us so Lyn had to follow me, I turned and waited for her to get up.

  Flo was there, leaving just enough room for her to get out. She had a pink clip hanging out of her mouth while she finished lacing her hair together.

  “Looks like you’ve got some competition,” Stu chuckled from behind her. He smiled and waved to Alex, knowing full well that he could hear everything. “Better watch out.”

  I scowled at him and took Lyn’s book bag from her. Alex wasn’t competition. Not for me.

  I waited until Lyn adjusted her sweater before grabbing her hand and leading her down the aisle. I smiled curtly at Alex. He huffed and stormed out of the exit before we could get to the door. I swung Lyn’s book bag onto my shoulder to free up my hand and pulled her hood over her head, giving the strings a little tug so it tightened around her face.

  “Be careful not to slip on the steps,” Max told her.

  The headlights of the limo shone through the rain and the wipers were flying across the windshield. The driver stood next to the open door at the rear of the vehicle with a giant umbrella. Lyn hurried down the steps with both hands on the railing. I followed right behind her.

  My body was tense as I secretly waited for something to soar through the air and kill me. There was even a fleeting moment when I stepped off the last stair and onto Roman soil that I thought I might combust. It wasn’t until I climbed into the dry limo that I could take another breath. I was relieved to be in one piece, but I still couldn’t relax. From that moment until the moment I left, I would have to be on my toes. Even if the Iustitia were claiming to need us, they could change their minds at any second. Especially after we figured out their problem and we weren’t needed anymore. Or maybe the whole thing was a ruse to begin with.

  I wiped the rain off my face with the sleeve of my charcoal jacket. Reece and Alex had already made themselves comfortable and were looking around. The ceiling was lit with white lights, and liquor was lined up on a shelf. The black leather seats were wet from where we had dripped rain onto them. Heat blew out from the vents at our feet, making my jeans feel warm against my skin.

  “Don’t worry,” Stu told Flo, coming into the limo behind her. “The hair is pretty much a lost cause anyway.”

  Her fist flew toward his face. He spun and sat down beside her, leaving her punch to land in the middle of Sullivan’s palm. He glanced at her nonchalantly and dropped her hand before taking the seat closest to the door. Max hustled in behind him, soaked.

  The driver slammed the door shut, and I felt like it was shutting on something more important than the bad weather. It was closing me into something big. Something dangerous. Of course it was dangerous—we were going to be surrounded by enemies, both human and otherwise. Inside Vatican City, where nearly everything would burn our skin, we were going to be our most vulnerable.

  It was going to be worth the risk if Phoenix was behind the sudden population boom. I couldn’t wrap my head around the master vampire letting a
city be terrorized, and Rome, the only city off-limits by our laws, in particular. It would be a disaster if the humans found out vampires really existed. The Enforcement Team should have been sent ages ago to clean up the mess. That was their job. If the secret of our existence was threatened, they had to erase the problem. As it was, though, Phoenix was letting it all slide.

  If nothing else was strange about the situation, that was. He had to be the one behind it. I didn’t know what he was after. Maybe he was trying to wage another religious war or make a play for power. I had no idea, but we were going to find out.

  The limo pulled into a small alley and stopped. Buildings rose up on both sides of us, with shrubs planted near almost every door. Someone had forgotten their laundry was on the line. Different colored towels were swinging around violently in the wind.

  Max pulled a key ring from his pocket and hopped out of the limo before the driver could open the door for him. He mumbled something in Italian, and the man got back behind the wheel.

  He hurried into one of the buildings and looked out at us. “Please come in,” he called.

  We hadn’t needed an invitation. As an Iustitia member, Max should have known that, but like he had told us, he was new to the job. He had only gone through basic training before arriving in New York and was really going for his masters in art. If this was what they were sending into the field, I wasn’t surprised that they were falling like flies. Entrance boundaries should have been Vampire Hunting 101.

  My eyes squinted against the sudden bright florescent lighting. The walls were made of dark wood and the floor taupe, stone-like tile. A large landscape hung on the wall across from the main entrance. A dark red mat was placed on the floor in front of a door, and another in front of the elevator.

  “My sister-in-law owns this building,” Max said. “She’s letting you use the second-floor apartment as long as you don’t kill her other tenants.” He blushed a deep scarlet as he realized what he said.