A Trail of Echoes (A Shade of Vampire #18)(20)

After Ben had finished with them, he came into view, splattered with blood. I assumed that he had killed all five of the men. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had drained all of them in one go. I didn’t understand how he actually contained all that blood in his body. It was a mystery to me.

He had a look of satisfaction on his face, that much was undeniable, but he also looked guilt-ridden—just as he had looked during the attack in the guesthouse.

He stepped into the control room and, to my surprise, stopped the engine. Once the boat had slowed down, he stepped out and walked to the edge of the railing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Going for a dip.”

He removed the sheet around his waist, now just in his boxer shorts, and dove into the sea. I walked up to the railing and watched him submerge and then re-emerge, rubbing his face. Although it was a cool night, I decided to join him since I was feeling sticky myself.

Fastening my sheet dress so that it wouldn’t slip off the moment I dropped in the water, I dove into the sea and resurfaced near Ben.

The water was rougher than I had expected. As I neared Ben, a wave carried me right up close to him—so close I ended up colliding with him. His hands caught my waist, the strength of his arms engulfing me as he kept me in place, anchoring me. I placed my arms around his neck as we floated together in the waves.

My eyes level with his, I gazed into his green irises that reflected the glimmer of moonlight on the waters.

His breathing became more uneven. His eyes fell to my lips.

Slowly, he reached a hand up into my hair at the back of my head. The next thing I knew, he was leaning in closer. And then his lips were on mine.

I breathed hard, pulling him closer as his mouth locked with mine. I tasted the salt on his lips, felt their coolness, their firmness as they pushed against mine and closed around them. When the tips of our tongues touched, fireworks erupted in my chest.

I had never kissed a boy before. But Ben’s kiss was everything I had imagined it would be… and so much more.

Even the echoes in my ears that I’d heard again earlier that evening vanished completely as I was consumed by the vampire prince of The Shade.

Chapter 14: Jeramiah

I looked around the room at the sacks of ground human bones that Michael and I had just finished processing in the machine. We had done extra this week and there were too many to carry downstairs comfortably, so Lloyd came to assist us. Entering the prison beneath the atrium, we walked swiftly past the half-bloods’ and humans’ cells, traveling deeper and deeper into the maze of cells until we reached the farthest chamber that was hidden behind a storage room. Entering inside, I told Lloyd and Michael that they could leave.

Looking down at the trap door in the center of the room, I bent down and lifted it open to reveal a dark, metal chute. A fragrant aroma of cooking wafted out. I’m just in time. I dropped the sacks through one by one before closing the trapdoor.

If this were a usual day, my work in this room would be done now. But today, I had something else to accomplish.

Opposite the main entrance to the room was a smaller, narrower door. I pulled it open and began making my way down the staircase behind it. Reaching the bottom, I found myself standing in the corner of a kitchen the size of a large hall. Everything about it oozed extravagance, from the table tops made of solid gold to the shiny silver cutlery.

Several large pots were bubbling over stoves and snake heads were baking in the giant oven. The sacks of ground bones I had just dropped through the chute were piled up in a heap in one corner, ready for the chef to return.

Passing through the kitchen, I opened its rosewood door and stepped out into another atrium. Situated directly beneath ours, this atrium was similar in design, except that it was much larger and immeasurably more luxurious. There was barely an inch of surface that wasn’t made of some kind of precious stone or metal, and in the center was row upon row of celestial fountains. It was truly a glimpse of heaven.

I began to make my way along one of the heavily ornamented verandas when a veil of light blue mist appeared before me. I stopped and stared at it until the body of a man manifested in thin air from the waist up. Beneath his torso was nothing but the light blue mist, which had thickened and now looked more like smoke. With gleaming golden eyes, long, curling black hair and a thickset jaw, Karam levitated before me.

Karam Nasiri—brother of the head of the Nasiri family of jinn. Our cohabitants and self-proclaimed masters of The Oasis.

“I have brought you three times the requested amount of supplies today,” I said. “Now my wish is to see your sister.”

He frowned at me, then nodded. “All right,” he replied, his voice low and throaty. “Come with me.”

He kept himself manifested so I could see him, and I followed him as he levitated toward the uppermost level of the jinn’s atrium and stopped outside a gold-plated door studded with red rubies.

He opened it and moved inside. “Wait here,” he said, before closing the door behind him.

I stepped back and leaned against the wall of the veranda, looking down at the sparkling fountains below.

Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that we had lived this way all these years. When my coven and I had first escaped the Elders decades ago and I’d gotten the idea to come to The Oasis, we’d had no idea what we might find here. We’d guessed we’d come upon—at the most—a ruined palace. And indeed that was what we’d found. With the help of our five witches, we’d renovated and built up The Oasis into the beauty that it was today and placed a protective spell over it. What we hadn’t realized was that The Oasis had already been inhabited since the Maslens had lived here. The place had been infested with a family of jinn—one of the oldest of this mortal realm.