Wicked Bite (Night Rebel #2)(49)

A flush sounded, then the woman came out of the stall. She seemed surprised to see me standing between the sinks and the door, staring at her as if transfixed. But then she began to wash her hands as if nothing unusual was going on.

“Do I know you?” I forced myself to ask in a calm voice.

She looked up and smiled again, more faltering this time. Her heart rate had sped up, too, indicating her new nervousness. Not that I could blame her. A vampire was blocking her path to the door while staring at her with unblinking intensity. If that didn’t make her nervous, she wouldn’t be smart enough to have survived whatever had forced her to take refuge at this island.

“I don’t think so,” she replied, then screamed.

I don’t remember making the decision to cross the room and grab her by the shoulders, let alone to hoist her up. But she was now in my hands, screaming while her high-heeled shoes kicked at the air since I’d lifted her off the ground.

That voice. Higher than mine but devastatingly familiar and with my same accent Ian said he couldn’t place when we first met. Few people could. Ancient Sumerian had died out as a language thousands of years ago.

“Who are you?” I snarled, just as the bathroom door burst open. The deadly magic horn had already exploded from Ian’s sleeve, but it retracted when he saw I wasn’t the one in danger.

“Veritas,” he said in a guarded voice. “What’s amiss?”

“Please, stop her!” the woman beseeched Ian. To me, she screamed, “Let me down, I’ve done nothing to you!”

She stopped, giving me a shocked look as I started cursing her in the first language I’d ever learned. From the way her eyes widened, she’d understood what I was saying, too.

“Who are you?” she breathed, speaking in Sumerian now, too.

I didn’t have time to reply when she began pounding on my arms and aiming her kicks at my body instead of the air.

“Who are you?” she shouted again, rage and frustration twisting her pretty features. “Do you know who did this to me? Was it you? Was it?” she finished in a roar.

Ian spun around, horn whipping out again at the crash as someone else flung the bathroom door open. Yonah strode into the room, red pinpoints gleaming from his moss green eyes.

“Who dares abuse my hospitality?” he thundered as the air in the room thickened until it felt like a tangible weight.

I dropped the woman only because I didn’t trust myself not to crush her to death in front of Yonah. “This woman,” I said through gritted teeth, “is not whoever she claims to be.”

“Ereshki is our guest of honor. This ball is in celebration of her being our newest member here.” Yonah’s tone sliced the air like a killing blow. For an instant, black wings spread out behind him, so large they touched the ceiling and pressed against each side of the hallway before they vanished.

The sight would’ve awed me, but it was nothing compared to hearing her name spoken aloud by someone else for the first time since I’d been human. For a moment, the past swallowed me so completely that I wasn’t Veritas, Law Guardian for the vampire council, any longer. I wasn’t even Ariel, beloved adopted daughter of Tenoch and secret biological daughter of the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld.

I had no name. I wasn’t worthy of one. I wasn’t even worthy to suffer and die for my god, Dagon, but he permitted it so others could see his magnificence when he raised me from the dead. After that, it was their turn to die for Dagon. If they truly believed in him, Dagon would raise them back to life, too. He’d proved that by raising Ereshki, and he’d gifted me with her presence so I was no longer alone in my cage. If Dagon didn’t raise his other sacrifices back to life, then they hadn’t truly believed in him. Perhaps the people in the next town would . . .

“Ereshki?” The harshness in Ian’s tone snapped me back to reality. “The bitch who conned you into continuing to believe in Dagon so he could keep torturing and murdering you?”

“What?” Yonah said.

At the same time, Ereshki screeched, “I did not do any of that! I don’t know you! Why would you say such things?”

Rage and regret over all the lives Dagon had brainwashed me to help him take made my voice hoarse. “If you’re not the same person who helped Dagon murder thousands by pretending to be his victim while all the time you were his ally, then you won’t have a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on your left hip.”

I should have been satisfied to see her face pale when I ripped her purple ball gown to expose her hip so Yonah could see that the mark was there. But I didn’t. I still felt so choked by her betrayal when I’d been at my most helpless that my throat felt as if it had been suddenly stuffed full of razors.

“I never got the chance to ask you why,” I rasped. “Why did you bother to befriend me first? You could have convinced me of Dagon’s deity without pretending to love me as a sister. It’s that cruelty I can’t forgive, let alone understand.”

She’d backed as far as she could into the corner of the room, her heartbeat sounding like a drummer banging away on steel lids.

“I don’t know you.” An anguished whisper as she frantically glanced between me and Yonah. “I have never seen you before now. I have no idea who Dagon is, either. You know I don’t!” she wailed, directing that, oddly, at Yonah. “I remember almost nothing before waking up in that ditch five weeks ago!”