Court of Nightfall (The Nightfall Chronicles #1)(31)

Seeing the leather straps and pliers gave me an idea. I pulled out the Token of Strife and used her supplies to make a leather necklace to hang it from, which I tied around my neck. Somehow I felt better with the ring resting against my heart.

Once again, something bright, glowing, shot past the front door, and I turned quickly and ran outside, determined to solve the mystery.

I didn't have to run long. Standing outside was a little girl, pale as moonlight, transparent even, with her back to me. She turned her head, and I recognized her as the girl from my dream. She still held the glowing orb.

"Who are you?" I asked. Was she some kind of new Zenith I'd never heard about?

But she didn't answer. Instead, she ran away from me and toward the woods by my house.

"Wait!" I yelled for her but she didn't turn, didn't stop, and so I followed. Knowing it was stupid to run around in the middle of the night, I still followed. Something compelled me.

We passed into the forest, the trees tall, dark and menacing—so very like my dream I had to look down to make sure I wasn't walking on the body of corpses.

I wasn't. Just plain old dirt and rock.

I kept running, twigs snapping under my feet as I ducked under low branches and followed her over fallen trees.

We soon came to two large boulders. She squeezed past them, a glow in between the space, and I sucked in my breath and did the same, with a lot more effort and less breathing.

A few scratches later I found myself in a grove, the earth under my feet white sand, glittering in the light of the moonbeams.

I'd spent my whole life in this house, on this land. I knew every hiding place, every cave, every trail, every tree.

This grove had never been here before.

I looked for the girl and saw her running up a hill to the center of the grove.

Toward a silver tree. It stood like a beacon of light in darkness with bare branches swaying in the windless night.

And below the tree stood a man in black with dark wings stretched out behind his back.

He turned to me, his face pale, eyes blue, a man ethereally beautiful, and he smiled.

The man from my dreams.

The last Nephilim.





Chapter 14


The Last Nephilim


"It's you." I froze in my place, my mind trying to find some cohesiveness between this experience and reality, but it came up empty.

"Yes. But do you know who I am, Scarlett Night?" His voice, deep and rich, had a trace of an old accent—Russian maybe? I couldn't tell. It burrowed into me, that voice, and left me shaking.

"I know you're dangerous." My body vibrated with his nearness, with the chill in the air, with the otherworldly feel to everything around us.

His grey blue eyes were unreadable as he studied me. "And do you fear me, Scarlett?"

"No," I said, honestly. I knew I should, that he could hurt me in so many ways, but instead I was drawn to him like a moth to flame. "What happened to the girl?" I asked, looking around for the ghostly figure that had led me here.

"I can conjure memories, like the girl, like this tree," he said. "And sometimes, they can do my bidding. I used the girl to lure you here, because I needed to make sure we were alone. "

He took a step toward me and my body moved against my will to reach him, to be closer to him. We stood a few feet apart under the silver tree. I had to look up at him. He stood a good foot taller than me, his chest broad, body hard and full of muscle under his black jeans and shirt. Up close I could see the perfection of his face more clearly. There would never be any mistaking this man for mortal. Every inch of him screamed power, magic, danger.

When he held out his hand, I looked down at it in surprise. "My name is Zorin, Andriy Zorin, Count of Nightfall, and Left Hand of the Twilight Queen. I apologize for leaving you, but I had to draw our attackers away last night."

I took his hand and instead of shaking it he drew it to his lips and kissed my knuckles. "It is a pleasure to meet you," he said.

His skin was cold, smooth, his hand strong and large, swallowing my own. When he let go my hand fell to my side, like a cut kite. I was at a loss for words for a moment, lost in his unfathomable gaze.

But then his words registered in my mind. Our attackers. Last night. Was it really just last night that my whole world fell apart? "What happened last night?"

"What do you remember?"

"I…" I closed my eyes and thought back. "I remember falling, crashing into the crystal case, shot, bleeding, the pain exploding inside me. I had shot at the case. At you," I said, realizing that he'd been in the crystal, preserved there like a mummy. "I shot at you, thinking you were a weapon, thinking you could help me. But they… then they shot me and everything went dark."

"You died, your life's blood pooled into the crystal and fed me, awakening me. I brought you back from the land of the dead. I gave you the power of the Nephilim."

I knew that already, of course I did, but still, hearing him say it sent chills up my spine. "Why? Why did you save me?"

"Perhaps because you reminded me of someone I once knew," he said, his eyes far away and sad.

I choked on unshed tears. "Why didn't you save my parents?"

He reached for my hand, stroking it. "They were already gone. They had no spark of life left to reborn them. I'm sorry, Scarlett. I tried."