Chapter Thirteen

He turned the camera back, and his heart relaxed when he saw her face.

I love you so much it hurts.

"Tell me," Ben said.

Tenzin rested her chin in the palm of her hand and stared at him. "I want to kiss you."

"You could do that if you didn't leave, so I refuse to feel sorry for you."

Her eyes were soft, and she mouthed something he couldn't hear, probably in a language he couldn't speak.

"Zasha is raiding along the coast," Tenzin said. "We found a survivor today. An old man. I flew him to the hospital, and he told me about his grandson who had married a vampire he met three years ago. He'd convinced the family to move with him up to Alaska, and they were all living together."

Ben's heart ached at the soft sadness in her voice. "The family?"

"All dead except for him. He has one granddaughter left somewhere in the south." She looked down. "If he lives long enough to see her. He probably won't live. I think his organs were bleeding."

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "He was human and already old."

"It's okay to feel sad about his family, Tenzin."

"I don't know them."

"But you know him now, and you know they were probably nice people who were just trying to live." Sometimes Tenzin's humanity was hard to find, but other times it was swimming just below the surface like a fish under ice. "So it's okay to feel sad. That's empathy."

She wrinkled her nose. "He is a great-grandfather now. I promised him that Brigid and I would kill the vampires who did it." She quickly added, "They're dangerous and they need to die or they will kill more humans."

"I know." Ben nodded. "That was a good promise, Tiny. There have been raids around here too. More humans and vampires killed farther south. No one is going to try to save these guys. The problem is finding them."

"Brigid thinks they are on a boat. Zasha is on a boat somewhere, and they are raiding from that boat."

That was as good a theory as any. "Brigid's smart."

Tenzin curled her lip. "She also said it is a big ocean."

Ben sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He needed a haircut, but he didn't want one. "She's not wrong. I was at a raid site last night. Carwyn said it reminded him of a Viking raid in Wales."

Something sparked in Tenzin's eyes. "Like Zasha's sire."

Ben frowned. "Was he a Viking?"

"Yes, or something that came before. Maybe he gave them the idea in the first place. He was an earth vampire, but he traveled the rivers by boat and he raided human villages at night."

"Name?"

"I don't even know it." Tenzin frowned. "I've never asked."

Ben would make it a point to ask Carwyn. "Okay, so Zasha was sired by some horrible Viking vampire and now they're re-creating that with other vampires. Why?"

"Oleg thinks Zasha is working with Katya."

"Katya thinks Zasha is working with Oleg."

Tenzin narrowed her eyes. "That's very… convenient."

"For who?"

"Whoever Zasha is actually working with."

"Maybe they're not working with anyone," Ben said. It was the sick fear in his belly. That Zasha was doing all this just because they could.

For fun and nothing else.

"We could ask why they're doing it," Tenzin said. "But maybe the better question is why wouldn't they? Where are you?"

She might be secretive, but Ben wasn't. "We're in Ketchikan right now."

"Ketchikan," Tenzin whispered. "I love the names in this place. They are fun to say."

"Is Oleg with you?"

"Yes, but only because I asked him to train Brigid. He's not really helping us, but he's giving Brigid whatever she asks for."

Ben tried not to smile. "You asked Oleg to train Brigid?" He was not going to share that with Carwyn. The man was already on edge, and the last thing he needed was the knowledge that a well-known lothario of the immortal world was working closely with his wife.

"He's a fire vampire." Tenzin spread her hands. "Zasha is a fire vampire. Most vampires go their entire life without siring one fire vampire, and Oleg's sire made two."

Knowing how closely fire and trauma were related, Ben was getting an even more hideous impression of Oleg and Zasha's sire. "God, he must have been so awful."

"Yes, but for Brigid, it is convenient. Oleg is strong, and his amnis is probably similar to Zasha's. His fire might have some of the same characteristics."

"Every fire vampire I've ever met has used fire in different ways," Ben said. "You think Oleg is going to be able to help Brigid understand Zasha better or something?"

"Maybe." Tenzin leaned back against something that looked like a bed. "I'm not sleeping. I think I only do it when I'm with you."

Ben narrowed his eyes. "You're lying."

"Not exactly," Tenzin murmured.

"Are you dreaming again?" Ben knew that Tenzin dreamed and it wasn't always pleasant.

"Something like that." She stared at something off-screen. "Was it wrong to come here?"

"No. You just shouldn't have left me."

"But if I hadn't left you, the large flowered one would be all alone." Tenzin closed her eyes. "You're going to bring him, aren't you? I hate his judgmental face."

"His mate is the one Zasha is after."

"I don't know how accurate that is."

Ben forced himself to ask the question that had been plaguing him for days. "Did you do something to Zasha, Tenzin?" Did you cause all this suffering?

He didn't expect her to answer. God knows she rarely answered anything about her past and when she did, it was usually cryptic.

But this time she was staring at something, her head cocked, her eyes softer than he expected. "I think…", she started. "I think I did the worst thing."

Ben drew in a breath and braced himself. "What?"

"I let Zasha live."

"They're around Seward." Ben walked into the common room under Buck's house. "Somewhere on the Kenai Peninsula. That's the most she could tell me. I doubt she really knows where they are."

The basement had been converted into guest quarters for Katya's people, so there were locked, reinforced doors, and a large fridge stocked with stored blood and bottles of blood-wine along with plenty of frozen red meat.

Carwyn was cooking something on the stove. "Did you talk to her?"

"She finally turned her phone on. I tried to track it on the network and called Gavin right after I got off the video call, but he said the most he could narrow it down to was the area around Seward. He said towers are pretty sparse around there."

Buck was sitting at the counter and drinking something with steam. Not coffee; Ben would have smelled that. "The Kenai Peninsula isn't massive, but it's not small either."

"Yeah, I looked at the map." He sat next to Buck. "They found a survivor from one of Zasha's raids."

Carwyn froze. "When?"

"Earlier tonight. Well, he was found two nights ago, but they went out tonight. I think Brigid was still on the boat on the way back. Tenzin flew the guy to get medical care."

"Who was it?" Buck asked.

"An old man who was living in a vampire compound with his family. His grandson was married to a water vampire named Rachel."

Buck cursed. "Jennie knew Rachel. I met her. Quiet gal. Dammit, this is awful. That woman never hurt a soul. She was…" Buck swallowed hard. "And her whole family? Damn it to hell. I know roughly where she was—it's around Seward—but she was real private. I've never seen her place."

Carwyn frowned. "I'm surprised there was a survivor at all. Based on that site we found the other night, I wouldn't expect Zasha's people to leave anyone alive."

"A couple of wind vampires dropped the old man and his daughter in the ocean," Ben said. "I imagine they didn't think he'd survive the swim back to shore. His daughter didn't."

Buck set his mug down. "That's weird though. The raid out here being just a few days ago and then one at Rachel's place the next night?"

Ben shook his head. "Tenzin said the raid on Rachel's place actually happened a couple of weeks ago."

"Still," Buck said. "That's all over the place. Where are they coming from?"

"The middle," Carwyn muttered. "They have a base between the two places. A central location."

Buck shook his head. "Central between Kenai and the Alexander Archipelago is open ocean, my friend."

Carwyn was staring at something in the distance. "What did Brigid find out from the survivor? Was he speaking? If he was, she would have questioned him."

"The old man said they came in on a Zodiac."

"They're on a bigger boat." Carwyn and Buck spoke at the same time.

Ben nodded. "That's what Brigid thinks. So we just have to find the boat where Zasha is hiding."

"Find a boat," Buck said. "No problem." He muttered, "Too bad it's a big fucking ocean."

Carwyn knocked at Ben's door when Ben was starting to feel sleepy. The night was still dark, but his body wanted rest. He could smell the earth vampire on the other side of the door, and he pulled it open.

"How was it?" Carwyn asked. "Seeing her?"

"I was pissed." He opened the door wider and motioned Carwyn inside. "But Tenzin taking off is not exactly a surprise. She hasn't done it since we've been back together, but when I was still human, she'd run off and I wouldn't see her for six months sometimes."

"Before you were mated." Carwyn sat in a chair near the old boxy television in the corner of the room.

"Yeah." Ben sat on the edge of the bed and combed his fingers through his hair. "It's harder to be away from her now."

Carwyn smiled a little bit. "You know, not long after we mated, Brigid took off to America. Hopped in your uncle's damn plane and flew over to Los Angeles. I had to follow her in a boat that time too. I'd pissed her off somehow. Don't even remember what it was at this point."

"Tenzin told me about that. She thinks it's hilarious when you fight."

"She would." Carwyn sighed. "This feels different though."

"It is different. Zasha is dangerous and has zero check on their power. Answers to no authority. Has no sire. And their clan is unwilling to police them."

"But I don't worry about Zasha hurting Brigid, especially with Tenzin with her," Carwyn said. "I worry about the collateral damage. Brigid left the lower States and came up here to decrease the collateral damage, but Zasha is only turning up the heat. It'll kill my darling girl."

"Well, she shouldn't have left you."

"No, she shouldn't have." Carwyn stared at the ground. "We're stronger together. I thought she knew that by now."

Ben felt a twist in his chest. "She knows it, but she's scared."

"And I feel every doubt and fear in my blood," he whispered.

Ben didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say. He felt as abandoned as Carwyn even though he knew Tenzin was expecting him to find her. It was impossible not to when the air that surrounded him linked his blood to hers.

"Did Brigid really think Zasha was going to meet her on an empty plain in the Arctic and they would duel or something?"

Carwyn shook his head. "Don't ask me how that woman thinks. I've only been alive a thousand years. You think I know the mind of my wife?"

Ben fingered the gold ring he wore on his left hand. "If I flew out of here at nightfall tomorrow, I could find Tenzin in a matter of hours. If I wanted to do that."

Carwyn frowned. "How long have you been mated?"

"Doesn't matter." He kept his eyes on his ring. Gold matter, ruby crystal.

The space between.

If he focused on it long enough, Ben would stop seeing the solidity of what he was holding and instead see the void that existed in all things, the space between its molecular structure. He was beginning to own that space in a way that even Tenzin struggled to understand.

It wasn't a normal wind vampire trait.

"The wind is different for me," he softly confessed to Carwyn, a vampire who had known him since he was a child. "I'm seeing things differently. Even from my sire."

"Does this have to do with the Bone Scroll?"

Ben shook his head. He had been given that object of enormous elemental power a few years ago, but whatever power it held was still locked in a dead language. Then again…

"I don't think so, but the whole reason I was given that was because my human blood was unique, so who knows?"

"So what are you saying?"

"I don't know," Ben said. "I'm not going to find her tomorrow night. I don't think it's time yet."

"Could you fly both of us?"

Ben looked up. "Do you think that would be a good idea?"

"I don't know." A muscle in Carwyn's jaw twitched. "I'm starting not to care if things are good ideas or not."

"Maybe we should stay here," Ben said, "no matter how much we want to find them. We need to find a boat in a big ocean, right? Hard to think of anyone who would be better at that than Katya and her people."

Carwyn curled his lip and bared a single long fang. "It's fucking annoying when you're sensible."

"I know, it really is. Blame my uncle."